Home International Regatta

This year’s Home International Regatta was held in Cardiff bay over a 1500m course.  The weather god had been kind and granted us sunshine for the day.  Our first race of the day was to be in the 2- a race we were confident in after last weekend’s performance.  The Irish went hard of the start with us and Scotland just down on them.  We held on and pulled back the lead as they slowly drifted back in the pack.  The Scottish remained strong and pushed had to stay with us just half a length up.  With 250m to go I called for our finish.  We had a bit of a mishap and ended up in Scotland’s lane.  We were having trouble with the steering foot and so I had to ease off to get us back in lane.  The Scottish crew creased the opportunity and took off down the course.  Once we were straight in our lane we made the chase towards the Scottish crew but unfortunately the line came just meters early and we finished an inch down coming home in second place earning 3 points for England.

 We then boated in the 4- which had been gelling more over the past week and I defiantly think this boat class suited us more than the 4+.  We had no idea of our opposition we had never raced any of the boats before.  We knew the Irish would start strong all there crews seemed to start strong and slowly slip to the back so we knew we had to go out with them and wait for them to pay the price.  Cross winds at the start made it tricky to get aligned and the umpire seemed to take a long time between attention and go.  We started diagonal in the lane and made a bid for the welsh lane followed by the Irish lane and finally straightened up into our lane after we made sure once more we didn’t prefer the Welsh water.  Deciding we had done enough touring of the bay we made our way down our own lane pushing through the Welsh who had been dropped with us.  We went hunting clawing back inches from the Irish.  We made the call to clear the Irish crew and we were left with just the Scottish crew to chase.  The Scottish crew had a comfortable lead leaving us in second place with another 3 points for the team.

 All medal hopes were pinned on the 8+ with the 4+ girls from Molesey BC who had won the Gold in the 4+ earlier in the day.  We had had one practice outing when we arrived on the Friday which seemed to go ok although it was that rough it was hard to tell.  There was some awesome power in the 8+ we just needed to care of the job at hand.  We came of the start pretty level across the playing field with the welsh taking the early advantage.  We clawed our way seat by seat back at the Welsh and with 250m to go we had a length on Wales who intern had half a length over Ireland and Scotland.  The Irish suddenly decided to take second place of the Welsh.  From behind the sea of red the green lycra of the Irish stormed through to take half a length lead over the Welsh.  Finally we had medalled adding to the success of winning the Senior Women’s trophy.  We also won both the Junior Men’s and Women’s trophies our overall points meant we also won the Team trophy. 

A good day for Team England.