St Catharine's College Boat Club

After the rather eventful second race, we were determined not to let anyone bump us again. It was clear it would be a tough race from the start in the strong headwind and rain, but we were confident we could get Robinson before they got Christ’s. Everyone was soaking wet by the time we got to the motorway bridge.
I don’t know what exactly went wrong when the start cannon went off, but it seemed like everything did. We were not ready, only 3 people took a proper stroke on the first draw, we were pointing in a completely wrong direction because I didn’t manage to get the boat perfectly straight and with most of stroke side not rowing we couldn’t make up for it. I managed to turn it just before we hit the bank and the guys did the rest of the starting sequence well, we didn’t panic. 

Nevertheless we got to hear the first whistle of Tit hall behind us very quickly as they gained on us during our complete disaster of a start. The dream of catching Robinson left us quickly after that. By grassy, the Tit Hall bow ball was just centimeters away from our stern. I called a power ten as I heard the cox behind us scream ‘kill’ and we pulled away. I, the bank party and some of the other people all yelled at the boys to stay on it and they did. The continued whistle dropped down to 3, I looked over and saw them quite far behind. I tried to take every corner as narrow as I could as I heard the whistling slowly cease. The next high pitched sound I heard was Will’s ‘YES!’, clearly completely out of breath. I looked over and more than a boat length behind us Tit Hall got caught by Churchill just at the top of the reach. It felt amazing and I know that we earned it.

We all had our little moment of relief and celebration and kept on going at a steady rate 32. I went through all the different coxing calls I could think of as we were passing the boats lined up for the next division, but we knew no one would catch us anymore and there was no one left for us to catch. We rowed over (and then a bit more, sorry about the coxing confusion), but even if we bumped tomorrow, I don’t think I could be more proud of the guys than I am today.