St Catharine's College Boat Club

Bumped FaT III

After having lost 14 places over the last 4 years, M2 were determined to bring this run to an end. The row down to the start was sloppy, but what was more worrying was that First and Third, who had been rowing up immediately behind us, never appeared around Grassy corner. It turns out that Caius couldn't wait for a potential headship push later in the week to bump a FaT crew, and so ploughed into them doing a practice start, snapping their strokeman's blade and breaking the rudder.

The boat eventually emerged with 7 men rowing, and, despite talk of a technical bump, some very quick repair work and a blade appearing from the boathouse meant that we'd have to earn our bump.

We tried to regain focus, but the cannon seemed to shatter that to the extent that Will fell off his seat on the first stroke. Consequently the start was poor, taking the full time to the stride to really get the boat going. After that it came together, consistently pushing off Magdalene and gaining on FaT, with the inevitable roll from the dirty water. FaT put in a push around First Post, holding us at half a length, but then we started moving back on them before delivering the bumps push just coming into the gut, bumping before Grassy.

As if enough damage hadn't been done in our division, Churchill decided it would be fun to park on top of us (leaving a rather unsightly pink stripe on our stern), throw their stern out into the river and force the remaining racing crews very wide, including Girton into FaT. It really wasn't their day...

Hopefully tomorrow, with a calmer start, we'll achieve the same result against LMBC III.

M2 catching FaT III (starts at 1:10):

2011 May Bumps day 1 M3 from Malcolm Scott on Vimeo.