Marlow Winners!

So the second day of racing was only over 1000m, so a good old fashioned sprint regatta. We had the morning off as the race wasn't until 4:20pm. So we woke up to have breakfast at the normal time of 7:30 only to find out that there was only brunch, another four hours away. Damn.

John told us to take up cricket

Instead we went down to the beautiful erg room and did a half hour, working on getting us all back working together. But we were pretty hungry and Joe had eaten the last of the food the day before. Joe has to sit two exams while he is here and he studied all day except for the race. Meanwhile Brad, Henry and I went and hit up the cricket nets. We were joined by Hana, who became our photographer later. We started off easy, but then we started bowling to one of the school boys, and he returned everything we could throw at him.

Paddling through to the start

We finally headed off to Dorney Lake for our sprint. After a warm up where the boat was feeling much better we lined up. There were only three crews racing but it was still game on. We took off out of the blocks and grabbed the early lead. We didn't let anyone catch us and although we were being chased by Carlow RC Ireland, we kept in front. We were soon off the water, derigged the boat, loaded it (a massive thanks to Ruud from Hudson for taking our boat) and we were off. First though we stopped by the Officials' tent to pick up and be presented with our medals. Yesterday we could have won some tankards so at least we got to take something home from this trip. I think we get to race for some more "pots", as they call them here, at the Reading Town Regatta this Saturday.

Winners!

So today we missed our breakfast as we were too tardy getting up this morning and Joe had to sit his first exam. The rest of us headed into Henley and rigged our boat. We also managed to change the steering shoes from bow to two so now we are back in the original seating order. Our first training session on the Henley course was very good. Joe got his eye in on navigating and I got to see how difficult it is to steer straight down the course. While the course is straight, the river isn't and the current which is very strong at the moment, pushes you into the boom at some points and into the other crew at others. We came off very happy with progress and we have the next week to nail our form.

Henry helping me with racing stickers

With only 8 more days until the regatta starts and 9 till our first race, we are getting pumped for racing. We found out that we do not need to race for qualification this Friday. Instead some 14 crews have to race off. I think we know that so far we have a few UK crews, Leander being favourites, a Melbourne University crew and two German crews to watch out for. It should make for some good racing. Now we just have to wait for the draw this weekend.

Our team talk before racing

Joe helping change the blades

Showing off our bling at the 157th regatta!