St Catharine's College Boat Club

Better late than never... Last weekend M1 took on Emma in the first round of the Pembroke Regatta. It's been several weeks since Winter H2H, so we knew it wouldn't be a walkover despite beating them comfortably there. The row down was too close to call between us, with Sam helpfully pointing out that "they're looking quite tidy." We spun on Plough Reach (after being shouted at by a boat owner for coming within the one nautical mile exclusion zone surrounding his slightly fading paintwork) and drew in to marshall.

The start of the race was a bit of a shambles... Emma with a canvas lead despite not having taken a stroke and the "attention, GO" being called with Sid's hand still in the air and half of our crew not even vaguely near front stops. Even so, we were well practiced in surprise starts, having to execute one a few days before to escape a race-pace Catz W2 who hadn't seen us until it was undoubtedly too late to avoid a messageboards-worthy collision. Even so Emma had half a length by the end of the start sequence and held that down the reach.

Coming under the railway bridge, it was clear all the grim 16 x 2 minutes and 4 x 8 minutes that Sam had been setting us on the ergs were doing their job. We could hear Emma struggling and we capitalized on it, bringing the margin back to canvas. However, following a couple of blade clashes it turned out to be too little, too late and Emma took the race by a nose.

On the upside, Emma went on to the semi-finals, so we're looking forward to bringing some of that form to the bumps campaign starting this Wednesday, following some sparring with Emma this afternoon.