St Catharine's College Boat Club

Having had a strong performance in the getting on race, we entered the first day in high spirits.  Having seen Homerton M3 and their lightweight trialists, we knew it would be a tough race but thought that we should be able to catch Emma M4 before Homerton caught up - however we had banked on a stronger start that we managed.

The start fell apart allowing Homerton to quickly gain half a length.  When we hit the stride we started making up station on Emma but it came too late as Homerton seized the moment and rapidly got the bump a few hundred metres past the motorway bridge.

Having settled down into a solid rythym after a dodge start, we felt optimistic about our chances for day two - confident in our chances of a better performance the next day.

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.

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.

With Joe Cooper called up to M1, and Stuart still ill, we roped in our coach, Ivan Scales, and M2 emeritus, Julian Russ, to assist in our efforts to row over head of the M3 division. 

We arrived early atbh, washed down the boat, and with a bit of confusion over timings, ended up mashalling prematurely, and meeting the crews rowing up from the previous division by Chesterton. So we sat under a tree by the bridge, jesting and laughing as the crews who'd be chasing us rowed by. Despite knowledge about how strong Pembroke II (rowing second in the division) were this term, morale was running high (if only in despair), as we pinned our hopes on an equally speedy Emma II catching Pembroke as we held them off.

Alas, Emma was nowhere to be seen (eventually being bumped by Clare in the run up to Ditton), and we ended up pulling into Grassy after conceding the bump. Today, we have Clare on our tails, and Pembroke (who failed to bump up into div 2) ahead.

Wish us luck.