St Catharine's College Boat Club

Ah Hubris… what a time to strike. You wouldn’t have thought a crew down two could get a little over confident but that’s where you’d be wrong. Buoyed up buy a fierce effort against Clare, and in the knowledge that Kings weren’t as fast we let the temptress known as ‘we can row over’ lull us into changing both the plan and our ‘find the red line and sit your ass on it’ attitude.

So despite a strong row up, and solid practice start when the fateful canon went we left just a little in reserve each stroke, I mean we had 2.6K to power through, no point getting tired now, right? Wrong, Kings started uncharacteristically fast and caught us with our pants down and our heads in the wrong 500m of the course.

We were bumped disappointingly before grassy corner and that was the end of it. Back at the rowing cave a firm resolve settled upon the crew, new names (of varying wit and historical context) were thrown about for the boat, and Saturday is so very on.

After a good row but not quite what we were hoping for on first time round, an intrepid M1 once again took to the water with a plan; row like champions until you can’t row anymore.

Once again our start was snappy and powerful, unfortunately Queen’s had gotten their act together and we failed to gain much ground that end. Clare were pushed off a little but came at us, pushes were called and their advance was slowed, a couple of risky corners on their part paid off (oh for their blades to have caught the bank) and as we came onto the reach we made one last effort before being bumped a few strokes later.

Overall a much improved performance, Clare were faster than Queen’s and we held them longer, just not long enough. Not the prettiest boat on the water but we made the Pegasus skip along the water like a slightly tipsy rocket.

The plan for Friday was to catch a fast Corpus crew before they caught Clare, so as with everyday we went as hard as we could off the line and hoped that it would work for us. Unfortunately Corpus bumped Clare just before Grassy and then failed to clear, which meant that we had to hold it up hard to avoid a collision and were awarded a technical rowover. This wasn't too annoying as if we'd carried on rowing, we probably would have just rowed over so we got the same result with far less effort!

On Saturday we'll be chasing a Clare crew who are on for spoons while being chased by a Wolfson crew on for blades, but we know that we are capable of bumping up on the final day of this eventful campaign.

After the disappointment of yesterday, Catz knew today was a case of rowing over between two strong crews. A strong start held Newnham on station for the first minute or so, but then Newnham started to gradually eat up the distance, bumping just on the apex of first post corner, cheerfully displacing a number of picnicking alumni outside the marquees.

Tomorrow will see W2 again looking for a rowover, needing to stay ahead of a solid looking Jesus.

We rowed for a grand total of 2 ½ minutes before our saviours from yesterday, Jesus II, took us out with a blade to the stern.

 I can’t really write this report without saying that they were a very good crew. They were stronger than us and bigger than us and fair play to them they really did execute it well today.

 They had a whistle on us before the motorway bridge and I guess if I was in their seat I would say it was a text book bump. They had us half way between the Motorway Bridge and First Post and despite our best efforts we could not hold them off. In front of us we made some ground on Peterhouse but not enough to get a whistle.

 Tomorrow we have Kings behind us who took out Selwyn just as we were clearing the river.