St Catharine's College Boat Club

After the canons began the first day of Lent bumps, the first for all in the Catz M3 boat, we powered through the length of the course. Despite comfortably holding off Wolfson M2, Queens M3 eluded us, alas.

Knowing that Wolfson would be going for the kill, day two saw the introduction of a new call, for emergency use only. With “power 10” lacking the urgency for escaping a bump, “ATOMIC 10” saw us break away from Wolfson’s half-length whistles, and they shrunk away along the reach. Once again, we rowed over.

Day three brought us low; Queens successfully bumped Kings M2 down into our division, and we hoped to have them in check. Wolfson truly emptied the tank however, and even our atomic call was no deterrent, we were bumped. Friday will be a day of rest, and on Saturday, the final day, we will tame the Wolf(son).

- Nathaniel Tye

The 2017/18 academic year has been historic for the Women’s side of St Catharine’s College Boat Club, with unprecedented success and a record 4 women’s boats entered into May Bumps. Having lost their position in the W1 division to a strong Homerton crew in 2017, W1 embarked upon the 2018 Mays Campaign with conviction, and their sights set on regaining their place amongst the top 17 boats on the Cam. The crew put in work on and off the water, with 7 sessions per week involving a tough erg regime and focussed outings on the river.

W1 placed first in the W2 division of Spring Head to Head, early on in Easter term. This win spurred the crew on in their training, and having overcome illness and injury the crew felt excited to line up along the Cam on the first day of May Bumps. Day 1 saw a quick and clinical bump on Magdalene W1, placing the crew in sandwich boat position. After a row over behind a strong Homerton crew, W1 prepared to row twice again on the Thursday. Starting at the top of the W2 division, a strong row over ensured a chance to catch Jesus W2 at the bottom of the W1 division. W1 caught JCBC quickly and secured their place in the 1st division. With a quick Trinity Hall crew bumping to the top of the second division, the pressure was on as W1 set out in a quick sandwich chasing Queens’ W1. With an excellent row St Catharine’s held off Trinity Hall and all three crews rowed over. Although pleased to have not been caught, W1 entered the final day of Bumps with confidence that they could hold off Trinity Hall and a new-found focus and excitement at the thought of catching Queens' W1. A quick start and a steady grind saw W1 slowly gain on the QCBC boat, and with grit and determination, W1 secured the bump on the reach. Up three, and securely in the first division, Catz W1 showed that a crew can be greater than the sum of its parts; a credit to the hard work and commitment of all 8 rowers, cox and coach!

Today's race was truly a goats galore. Catz W3 took on Fitz, the college home to the mascot of the goat. Coincidence....or not? Little did they know that the very goats on their blades meant to intimidate the opposition were actually spurring us on! If this wasn't motivation enough for the crew, we also had Caius on our tails. Just like the scales on their siren leggings, we knew they were going to be slippery. Their displays of pre-race complacency such as "they're an easy bump, we'll catch them in 30...no wait, 20 strokes!" (overheard by Bow whilst marshalling) and their incongruous yoga ritual resulted in it hardly being a surprise when they attempted to cut us off on First Post corner. Clearly their heads weren't fully in the game, as was evidenced by the fact that they crashed into the bank. Caius could only watch in sorrow as Catz W3 sped down the river. With the threat of perusers temporarily halted, it was time to give Fitz "a taste of their own medicine". Without even the need for the kill call, the goats of Catz W3 went charging towards Fitz, bumping them on Grassy.

After Catz held it up, Caius having recovered from their embarrassing accident, were forced to row over in defeat. As James summarised nicely, "They got their bump... but it was with First Post Corner."

Once again Catz W3 held strong in the face of the adversary, albeit both a scaly and a 4-legged one.

Bumps has so far lived up to its reputation and it’s been an eventful first two days for W2 this Mays. With two girls also rowing/coxing in W4, we’ve had to recruit a few subs to get us to the P+E where we can swap around crews – big shout-out to Michael, Matt and Georgie for helping us get there! 

The start of Day 1 did not exactly go to plan. After washing our boat down the night before, we had (stupidly) not put our seats back on the slides. A frantic scramble for seats then ensued and we quickly discovered that, in fact, not all of the seats are the same in our boat. Suffice to say it took a good while to fix the problem but we thankfully made it to marshalling on time, albeit slightly more stressed than anticipated. We made the crew change and it was heads in the boat, attempting to forget the woes of our seat drama. We were chasing Christ’s W2 with Emma W3 behind us. After seeing some of Christ’s practice starts, we were feeling quietly confident about our chances. The race went smoothly and we managed to get a bump on Christ’s before First Post Corner. The fun had just started at this point however as we somehow found ourselves witness to some classic bumps carnage with about 5 boats piling up in the middle of the river, all thanks to some slow clearing from Christ’s…

Going into Day 2 we were much calmer at push off, with the seat worries of the day before behind us. We managed a swift changeover again and everything seemed to be running smoothly. Today, we were chasing Medwards W2. We got to our station and although it was slightly breezy, we managed a good start and it seemed as though everything was going swimmingly as we quickly gained on Medwards W2 ahead of us. Our race was unfortunately cut short by an umpire accidentally sounding their emergency alarm, meaning that all the crews immediately had to stop racing. Any boat after station 8 in our division therefore had to re-row the race. We spun back and prepared ourselves, feeling assured by the gains we had made at the start of the first race. The race began, and about 30 strokes later ended in us bumping Medwards W2, yet to even reach our rhythm call. 

Two days, two bumps for Catz W2!

Day 1 - Catz W2 bump Christ's W2 and carnage ensues

Day 2 - Catz W2 celebrate a bump on Medwards W2