Bumps night 4

Through the day I studied photos of us, both on the Jet Photography site and the ones that Becky’s friend James had taken. In all of them it became apparent that everyone but me was twisting towards their blade to get more purchase on the water. This matched what I had seen of the senior crews.

We got the boat in with help from some of City 8. Max came up to me having thought about what I’d said about my catch the previous night and told me I needed to drop the blade in rather than holding it there. I told him that I had started to do that, and move up the slide quicker to catch in time, but what it meant was that my body movements were no longer matching the people in front of me. He rather unhelpfully told me that I’d just have to make them match. Emma gave us a bit of criticism about having given up the night before when we went to half pressure and lower rating while still racing. I spoke up and said that I was completely buggered and just simply couldn’t row at that rate anymore.

We pushed off and rowed up, doing a few starts. Emma had us rowing at a firm but maintainable speed and said we looked very good. I started trying to twist to get more purchase on the water, and it seemed to fix the problem of finishing early. I still had to rush up the slide to catch at the same time as everyone else, but at least I was finishing at the same time.

When we got to the lock, Emma talked us through our strategy, which was to go easier on the start and conserve energy for the chase. This is because we were determined to catch City 6, who’d been bumped down to us. Max had been telling us that bow side had been pulling too hard at the start anyway. We pushed off the bank earlier, at 40, to enable bow and two more time to straighten the boat and to get more length off the chain. This meant that approaching the final gun we were moving towards the bank, which might not have been the intended result. We had a good start and I think we all tried very hard. We did have a lull where everyone got tired, and Anne’s stroke rate went down (meaning we had to follow) but we worked very hard all the way down the course. The bank kept telling us that we were close and Emma was screaming at us to work harder. Kathy snuck two peeks but I didn’t dare. We gave up on the last straight and brought the pressure down. We stopped before the white house and none of us could move any more. Ed was marshalling on the bank and he said that we hadn’t finished yet because our stern hadn’t cleared the white house. Bow and two stroked us over the line and after a few more minutes we continued past the railway bridge. We pulled in to offload Max, who said he was proud of us. Danielle jumped in the cox’s seat.

It took ages for City 8 to come through and I thought they’d been bumped. Finally they came through decorated with greenery, having bumped Radegund 3.

We pushed off just in front of them, and rowed back. All the pressure was off and we rowed rather haphazardly, going into the greenery on one bank, and then into a boat on the other side. City 8 were following us, and even with 4 of them rowing to our 6, they were moving faster. We got the boat out with the help of Canadian Angela et al because City 8 took too long. Becky and Vicky wiped the boat down and I washed it with the hose while everyone else helped Angela with her boat.

City 8 was going up to the beer station near the Pike and Eel and then on to watch the races. I went up with Danielle and Vicky again, Danielle bought us ice creams (must buy her a drink in return) and we stopped on the reach this time. We saw Fran and Martin and Rich and Zak go up further, but we decided we’d see more action where we were. Max came up doubling Lou on a bike and they stopped to sit with us. Sadly, the first City women’s crew were bumped by the up-and-coming second 99s crew, but I did predict that one. Therefore they didn’t even come as far up as us. The other two women’s crews held out for rowovers.

Max told us that Ed had coxed the women’s crew that had borrowed our boat and apparently was unable to steer it. They had full rowing power on one side + full rudder but they still weren’t going around a corner. In desperation, Ed had his whole arm in the water trying to steer the thing. Max must have been doing a pretty good job to keep the thing on track – the story was substantiated by Danielle talking to Ed later at the party. We decided that we might have had a chance to catch City 6 had the rudder been doing something to help us take the corners.

The first div men’s crews went through and I think no one was bumped from City. We headed back to the boathouse and the bbq was well on the way to being cooked. Max offered Vicky and me some of his fruit flan which was very good. I went home to get changed and missed the presentations and the coxes going in the river, though I don’t think there were any surprises.

The two City 7 crews made the presentation of gifts to Emma and Jo. They both really are very cool. The party was fun – there were fireworks and fire throwing and someone threw Brian’s City 7 crew in the river because they were the only ones to get blades. Simon wasn’t happy because he lost one of his thongs. City 8 called me into their huddle as they talked about the week and gave Kat and George gifts. I got to have my arm around Rich for about 5 minutes. While we were talking to George, he said that he’d been impressed with how W City 7 was looking and thought that we would bump City 6.

The music started after midnight, and the dancing soon followed. The bar dried up at about 3am. Rich was doing silly dancing and finding the dregs of everyone else’s drinks, and the rest of us were rocking it up to 50s rock’n’roll. Brian can really dance. I left at about 4.15.