St Catharine's College Boat Club

Having been awarded the only "easily" victory margin from quarter-finals day, we were feeling good for day 2. It was business as normal as Basile sprinted in half way through the warm up apologising profusely about his skittish relationship with his small collection of proteins. Paddling down to the lock we were feeling good, the sun was out and yesterday's wind had found more important people to annoy.

Our semi-final was against an unknown FaT crew who had narrowly beaten Queens' the day before. Starting off upstream station we struggled to find the strong rhythm from yesterday, and watched as the crew behind drew to well within station by First Post. However, after another 3823 rhythm calls and shouts from Basile to "decompose the stroke," we found new purpose and slowly but surely drew away in the glassy waters of Plough Reach. Like Will towards an organic salt and pepper cracker, we sprinted for the line. We were in the final for the second year running.

Going into the final we were definitely the underdogs. We sprinted hard off the start, rating like a GB eight that had accidentally taken sculling blades to the Olympics. However, the crew that had bladed to head of the river in Mays soon started to show their class, and it took a colossal effort to hold them level on the reach. Like the defenestration of Prague, history had repeated itself and we were runners up again.

It's a bitter-sweet goodbye to our half-boat, half-submarine as we start in the eight next week. Next stop - Fairbairn's.