christ church regatta...

And now, a note on the Christ Church Regatta! As I mentioned in a previous post, this was the big novice racing event of Michaelmas term. The first races were scheduled for Wenesday afternoon. We were supposed to race at 248, though by then there had been so many issues with earlier races that it was all about an hour behind schedule. Not really a good thing when it means standing (or sitting still in a boat) in the freezing cold, but there wasn't much we could do about it! During our race piece, we actually had to stop halfway as the claxons sounded meaning there was an emergency on the river. It turned out that one of the boats who had finished racing had capsized on the side of the river as they were getting out at their boathouse! Eight girls all went into the icy river, and their blades floated out into the racing lane. After sitting around for a few minutes at that stage, it was decided to start our race again where we were in the course... We were actually just about equal with St. Anne's (our race opponent) at that point. We got off to a fantastic second start, and just pulled away from them. They had a few issues with the second start, and we ended up beating them by a few boat lengths. It was a good feeling to win!

Our next race was scheduled for Friday afternoon, but because of bad weather, the regatta was cancelled that day. The organizers decided to overcome this obstacle by dithing all of the crews who had lost their first race, and by shortening to course to only 400 meters (from 750)!! In the new draw we were paired against Lincoln. Unfortunately, when the race came, we got off to a bad start, and with the really short course length, there was just no time to make up for it and catch them. We put up a good fight, but lost that race in the end. So that was our grand exit from the regatta. Oh well, it was good fun while it lasted, and we had good team spirit throughout. We took some more serious crew photos, but I thought this one would be more fun to share... Until next term.