16th March 2009

After our strong showing at Molesey Vets Head a fortnight ago we were confident of putting in another good performance in this, our last warm up for the all important Vesta Vets Head.

Of course, we hadn’t reckoned on the vagaries of the Kingston organisers who felt we would be best off starting way back at No. 116 (we finished 51st last year) – slap bang in the middle of Womens’ Novice Eights!   To be fair to them they did offer us a last minute bump up to No.76 but amidst the chaos at marshalling Paul settled for our original allotted space. Shouldn’t have!

In fact for the dedicated spectators up at the start marshalling was quite eventful this year, due to a strong stream and difficult wind.  We witnessed a marshalling school eight get caught by the stream and pulled sideways into the path of the oncoming racing crews. If Royal Navy hadn’t had good brakes fitted there could have been a bit of a coming together – and Thames’ handbrake turn to get around the obstruction was highly impressive.

For us, we were rafted up between the lovely ladies of Southampton University on the bank and St Georges Hospital on our outside.  When the time came to disentangle and move up St Georges were also snatched away by the stream and that was the last we saw of them! 

Just when we thought everything was under control we heard that the Yarmouth Belle (large Turks fake paddle steamer passenger ferry thing) had decided to move up the (closed) river and was causing a bit of a problem for racing crews.  It was decided to suspend racing until that had cleared the course – leaving a long wait before we could finally get underway.

We span up to our new, high cadence low intensity start which had proved so successful at Molesey and again found ourselves making good progress with sufficient reserve for the power phase in the middle part of the race.  After what seemed a very long time we caught  Thames about a third of the way down, along the wall, and a Bristol University crew near the finish.  Having all but cleared the University girls they decided to have a swipe at us and clipped our five and seven’s blades – upsetting us slightly in the process (heartfelt apologies to anyone who heard the colourful language directed at their cox as this slow-motion collision unfolded – not least apologies to their cox who was struggling to steer the boat while using a megaphone!).

Spike remembered to keep it going to the finish this year – Paul struggled to spot the finish board which has been moved to a lovely old boathouse on the Middlesex bank. (you’d think they’d mention these changes in the crew instructions wouldn’t you?!).  Our on board clock put us at a respectable 17 mins or so.  The official time was 18:44 and put us 4th in our class, out of 4, and 106th overall;  so not as fast as we had hoped or felt.

No matter, everyone enjoyed the long day and we finally “blooded” David Jones in a current Twicks Vet eight.  The full crew was Richard Stanley (Bow); Bob Hurles; John Sewell; Dennis Kenny; David Jones; Rob Bailey; Keith Baldwin; Simon Pullen (stroke); Paul Davis (Cox).

Thanks once again to those of you who came out to support and cheer us on.  Our next race is “the big one” – Vesta Veterans Head on the Championship Course on the Tideway – starting at Noon on Sunday 22nd March.  We start No.106 as a very old Vet E!

Oh, and good luck to the younger men for Saturday’s Eights Head – their “big one”!

Paul Davis