10th February 2008

The Molesey Veterans Head on Sunday 10th February, 2008 presented TwRC vets with our first opportunity to boat the Vet F eight. This is hoped to be one of our more successful seasons in this class and we needed an early benchmark.

As is often the case we found ourselves hamstrung with equipment shortages (blades) and crew absences – not least Spike, our highly effective stroke and general motivator, sunning himself in Australia. This resulted in a very scratch crew arriving on the start after paddling up from Eel Pie (two locks and many miles – thank goodness it was a beautiful, sunny day!).

It didn’t help our cause much that the Reading/Nottingham composite, two boats ahead of us, had successfully wrapped themselves around the turning buoy at the start. Tideway Scullers, immediately ahead of us, managed to turn onto their tail, leaving us nowhere to turn into so we had to wait until they all got clear. This resulted in us rowing in a hole. That was less of an issue than our cox (me!) paying so much attention as to where exactly TSS had got to that we missed the build up for the start. The first we knew about it was when the start marshall called “go”! After that it all went quite well, by the end the scratch crew had bedded in and was making good progress, closing slightly on TSS to regain some of the substantial lead they had built up.

At the end of it all we were fourth, some thirty seconds behind class winners, Tideway Scullers. More encouragingly we were at 95% of their pace – they the much fancied class leaders, us very much a scratch boat. This, and our continuing successes in the smaller boat classes, bodes very well for the season.

Special thanks go to Peter Morley and David Wyatt from Weybridge and Southampton respectively, and Olly Cobb (TwRC) for subbing in at late notice.

The next event for this boat is Kingston Head, then the Vets Head on the Sunday after the main event.
Paul Davis