Yellow flag: blessing or curse? Blessing, we decided, as a) the race would be quicker and b) with a bunch of junior and novice boats scratched then we’d have significantly less time marshaling. Our early “fine-tuning” outing (only our second with the full lineup) confirmed that the stream was not the problem, but wow, that cross-wind was not nice!
A couple of hours after setting off for the race and heading down to our marshalling point beyond the bandstand, we were back outside the boathouse and not too long after that we could actually start racing. Approaching Chiswick Bridge we switched on the power, and an “UP, UP, UP!” from Ellie brought us through the start before settling into our race rhythm.
With our adrenaline pumping, the corner round to Barnes Bridge was over before we knew it and as we pushed the bridge away at rate 31 it was time to do a reset and focus on technique and moving together for the stretch up to Chiswick Eyot. Beyond the Eyot and with legs burning, we were into the big corner past St. Paul’s. A call to “dig deep” gave us another burst of speed, then with Hammersmith Bridge in sight a “final push”, “empty the tank” and then another(!) “final push” and we were over the line.
Yes, we got overtaken, and yes we could have been tidier, and maybe we could have been faster, but we gave it our best, beat some other crews, and survived to race another day.
Boat 249 Op Mas B/C/D/E 8+ consisted of Ellie Paterson (cox), Devlin Lindeque, Yan Tordoff, Andy Reynolds, Doru Procopiu, Mark Russell, Steve Cardwell, Jose Cotera, Gideon Fackrell
