St Catharine's College Boat Club

We knew that this would be a tough race with Corpus M1 in front, who had improved by orders of magnitude from the crew that almost cost M2 blades last Mays. We were being chased by a Clare boat who were, on paper, much slower than us and the Emma crew chasing them. On top of this, a last minute crew change introduced a further unknown factor.

After the M5 division re-row we still had no practice starts, and so the actual start of the race was a little nervy. Despite this we moved slightly on Corpus off the start, while Clare, using their seemingly default fly-or-die tactics, moved to within a length of us. We didn't panic and stayed on our plan, and after receiving an optimistic second whistle, Clare were dropped outside the Plough and bumped by Emma at the railings. At this point, Corpus had moved back out to two lengths on us and held us there for the rest of the course.

A solid row for day 1, with another chance at hitting Corpus, and holding off a speedier Emma crew, on day 2.