{italic}Rowed over
Report by Tasha Scott{enditalic}
A day’s rest had left W2 fresh and raring to go. We had high hopes that we would be able to follow Christ’s II up the chart and bump Clare Hall I. Having a full crew again made for a very solid row up, everyone focusing in on the task ahead. Both practise starts went well, building our confidence even more.
Arriving very early, never having had to row straight to the lock to marshal, we sat around for 20 minutes fiddling with cameras and suchlike, and making sure we were ultimately prepared.
The last cannon sent us off in a fairly together start, and before long we were hearing calls of ‘within station!’ from the bank. However, these soon changed to frantic calls of ‘go right, go right’, and we were extremely disappointed to find that Clare Hall had somehow managed to bump Christ’s right off the start. This was entirely surprising seeing as Christ’s II were pretty much our biggest threat in the division, and had previously bumped Clare Hall. We later discovered that Christ’s four had had an overhead crab, causing them to stop soon after starting, and giving away an easy bump and any blades possibilities they had.
So, after all this confusion, we carried on rowing, settling well. Not much further up the course we found that any overbump possibility on Queens II had gone yet again as they bumped Newnham II. This meant yet another steady row over for W2. Eventually we took it down and down again, sailing through the finish well ahead of Downing II (as an aside, Downing II managed to crash on the outside of Ditton, giving a lucky Catz an easy overbump just 20 strokes from the finish!).
Overall, an unfortunate day, showing the unpredictability of bumps, and especially lower division bumps. Perhaps tomorrow we can wreak some revenge on either Christ’s II or Newnham II. Either way we have a hard row ahead of us…
