St Catharine's College Boat Club

We may love carbs but being the sandwich boat was not an ideal start to our Mays campaign. We had a race plan to stick by: fend off kings in a solid chunky row over then go out all guns (did you know Rosie has a 6 pack) blazing for Fitz in the second race.

We had a wobbly start off first station owing to our nerves. Kings caught on us slowly over the first half of the course, eventually getting 3 whistles coming out of Ditton corner. But here we knew our restart call was coming as we had planned and we executed this exactly as we wanted giving us the push we needed off kings. From there we broke them, inch by inch, length by length, leaving them dropping further and further into the distance. We really fell into a nice rhythm together onto the reach, which is where our boat speed picked up and we started to row like we have been in practise pieces. Our aim for the second race was to row like we did on the reach.

The second race was a lot more controlled and we pushed together as a crew. We held station with Fitz for the first 15 or so strokes but then they pushed away, eventually bumping Queens on Grassy. With two bumps ahead of us, the only possible way to get back into division 1 today was a double over bump, so we will quite happily walk away with a solid row over and second chance tomorrow. After all we love the doublé (nanna mex reference, ask AC/RT the self-proclaimed boat club “fatties").

Tomorrow we hopefully face two races again. We have shown Kings we are faster over the course, and we can repeat a row over tomorrow if we row smart and strong. Then we go for round 2 on Queens. We got them in Lents, now we want them even more in Mays.

A final message as we part from day 1 of May bumps:

"When you are ready, come and get it”