May Bumps 2010 Day 1 M2

Bumped by Pembroke II

After the Catz curse struck again, Lothar injuring his knee during Saturday's outing, we once again found ourselves in the position of having to row a bumps race with a sub, and hence a crew that had spent a total of 1 hour together on the water. Jon came into the boat at 3, so that Ivan moved to 2 and I sat at 4. However, the paddling and the practice start were very promising, and the crew started to gel well.

We knew the size of the task in front of us though. Christ's II were likely to bump FaT III very quickly, and we knew Pembroke II were very fast. The conditions meant the start wasn't as nice as the practice one (given the rain was now torrential), although we hit a reasonable 42. We closed to almost a length on Christ's, but they got whistle on FaT at the same time and made their bump very quickly. This left us to try and fend off a quickly chasing Pembroke crew, and this proved too much as they slowly reeled us in before bumping half way down Plough Reach.

Whilst disappointing, the row back was again very promising, and once Pembroke send some slower boats down to us, I'm confident we won't be down for too much longer.