Terrifying crab

The day of fright…

We had George (and his wife for the first half) coaching and someone called Emily coxing. The boathouse guy (I think it was him) made some adjustments to the footplates before we took off. Ewan was in bow, I was in 2, Martin in 3 and Liz in 4. Rich 5, Zak 6, Allan 7 and Matt stroke.

We warmed up (joke since it was so bloody hot) and rowed in sixes down to the lock. George’s wife gave us feedback and insisted that I was catching early. I’m sure I wasn’t.

Allan was to swap with Maria here, and so since Allan is bowside and Maria only rows strokeside, I volunteered to go into 7 so Maria could go into 2. I didn’t mind at all because I wanted to work back on bowside to see if I could still do it. George decided to have us doing some firm pressure work in 4s so we weren’t distracted with balance issues. I was rather happy at this, and bow went first, then stern. I was rowing with all the big boys and I felt like I was actually contributing to moving the boat. Bow side felt very good. I think my left hand is naturally better at feathering. I was very pleased at how I was rowing in this section.

Then they brought all eight in. The balance went to hell and it was chronically down on bowside. For some reason the 7 seat took the brunt of it and I literally could not lift my blade out of the water because it was hard against the opposite gunwale. I couldn’t square and I could hardly get the blade behind me at all. During my struggles, my thumb got pinched between the gunwale and the blade, but not squarely. I fought on for a few more strokes, with maybe 3 good ones, until I caught an enormous crab and they stopped the boat. The blade handle moved quite violently and made contact with my face, but must have only touched it. I hate to think what would have happened had my reactions not been quite good.

I was thoroughly rattled after this and close to tears. I called out to the bank that I couldn’t row in the 7 seat. They took Maria back out, put me back in 2, and George’s wife went into 7. Maria had moved my footplate, and I couldn’t get it back where it was. I got it as good as possible and we went off all eight. I was hoping that the boat would stay leaning to bow to show George’s wife what I’d been going through, but the lean, while there, was nowhere near as bad. I don’t understand why that happened. I didn’t row terribly well here, but the balance was over to stroke side a few times. We did some firm pressure work here for quite some time and hearteningly, the balance was rather good when we did that.

After we got the boat away, we went upstairs to watch a video of the 2003 Boat Race, which was absolutely fantastic. We had a beer (it was Rich’s round) and I offloaded a lot of the fruit from the degree ceremony. Zak told me that he had been in that 7 seat recently and found it very difficult, but he thought it was just because his legs were too long. After I got out Zak had suggested to someone that the rigger might be too low. Rich said he was struggling in 5, with the blade handle against the gunwale, but the problem wasn’t as pronounced there. I felt marginally better, that perhaps it wasn’t my fault.