St Catharine's College Boat Club

After Darwin M4 kindly realised that we would like to row bumps and obligingly scratched to give us a chance and so we started at the bottom of the river with only up to go. After practicing starts the way down we decided to go off hard and try to put some fear into the LMBC crew ahead. This worked, however LMBC were able to harness their new found fear of the wheel and catch Pembroke in front of them (thanks for the assistance is yet to be forthcoming from LMBC). After this we lost the seat for 5 and we had to settle for completing the course.

Overall a solid start and a strong row-over despite some issues.

Captain's Note: Special thanks to the Chaplain who, unable to row on a broken seat kept himself busy by roaring encouragement to the rest of the crew. 

We knew that this would be a tough race with Corpus M1 in front, who had improved by orders of magnitude from the crew that almost cost M2 blades last Mays. We were being chased by a Clare boat who were, on paper, much slower than us and the Emma crew chasing them. On top of this, a last minute crew change introduced a further unknown factor.

After the M5 division re-row we still had no practice starts, and so the actual start of the race was a little nervy. Despite this we moved slightly on Corpus off the start, while Clare, using their seemingly default fly-or-die tactics, moved to within a length of us. We didn't panic and stayed on our plan, and after receiving an optimistic second whistle, Clare were dropped outside the Plough and bumped by Emma at the railings. At this point, Corpus had moved back out to two lengths on us and held us there for the rest of the course.

A solid row for day 1, with another chance at hitting Corpus, and holding off a speedier Emma crew, on day 2.

We were warned that the lower divisions are chatoic, and so it proved. After an unfortunate crabbing incident off the start we eventually got our race speed up and strode well under the railway bridge. 30 seconds or so later the whole division was held up by bumps further up the river and the decision was made to re-row the entire division. We spun around and headed back to our marshalling point, grateful for a second chance only to be informed that we would not be involved in the re-row as the crew behind, Pembroke III, had been awarded a techinal bump for an earlier incident. Disappointed, frustrated and out for revenge, I'm confident a more positive report will follow day 2! 

It was never going to be an easy week starting 5th in the top divsion. Being chased by a poorly performing FaT crew, with a potentially fast Jesus ahead, we planned to go hard off the start, and accept whatever came from behind if we didn't manage to catch Jesus. As it happened, we did gain on Jesus off the start, but not by more than quarter of a length, before dropping off to 2 or 3 lengths down Plough Reach. FaT behind were pushed onto us by Pembroke, but never got much within a length, even from a kill call, while we had reserves left. 

Overall, rowing over was a solid result, and if we can achieve the same tomorrow against a more testing Pembroke crew, we can be very happy. 

It's fair to say M3 have had a difficult term so far. Due to injuries and illness, we were limited to training in fours for the first couple of weeks and didn't manage to have an outing as eight until Spring Head to Head. Despite this, we managed to put down a respectable time there. It felt like we made a lot of progress in the following weeks and when our second race, Champs Head, came up, we felt a lot more prepared. But then it turned into a crab-filled disaster.

Still, we knew that at our best, we were better than most crews in our division and with a Downing rugby boat ahead of us, the task for day one seemed manageable.

Our row down felt pretty solid and after seeing Downing rowing out of time and unable to keep up with us, we arrived at the start line fairly confident. Our start was pretty terrible, but despite this we started gaining on Downing and the first whistle came quickly. The second and third followed rapidly and we made the bump just past top station.

It was a solid performance we can definitely build on during the rest of the week. We'll be chasing Caius 3 tomorrow, who were bumped by Jesus 3 today.