Having finished at the Met Regatta for the day (see separate post), I am free to head over to Wayfairer’s boat club for their ‘Desborough Challenge’.
This is 2 laps of Desborough Island with a few sharp turns, a crew change and a narrow section to negotiate.
My biggest problem on arriving near the course was finding somewhere to part, as all of the car parks were full as were most of the surrounding roads.
I eventually manage to find a spot over on the island and walk to find the rest of the crew.
Having found them at the Elmbridge canoe club , we all walk to Wayfairer’s boat club to find what boat we will be rowing (they supply the boats for this event).
We have been designated Intermediate masters D and the next boat in is a Wintech leisure quad, just like the ones we have at our own club.
We take our seats, adjust the foot stretchers and head off to the start.
The crew ahead of us is having some issues and so we are stopped a few times and ultimately end up having a standing start, rather than the rolling start we are supposed to have.
Next issue occurs at the first 180 degree bend where the marshall wants us to stop and wait for a load of cruisers to go past, however we have already committed to our turn, so largely ignore the marshall and carry on with our turn and then power past the cruisers.
The width restriction turned out to be wider than we expected, so just involved us pulling the oars close to the boat.
Our crew change happened shortly after the width restriction and went smoothly, the ladies had practiced this manoeuvre several times during our sessions over the pervious few weeks.
We caught the team ahead of us at the next bend and turned inside them, then proceeded to race them down the straight before overhauling them at about the half way point.
No cruisers at the 180 this time, I slam my right oar in backwards and hold on to it to act as an anchor and the rest of the crew row on with their left oars for a power turn.
We pass a few more cruisers on this lap, the width restriction was easier to negotiate second time around and then we started to power off to the finish.
I made our overall time 39:01.8
Turns out our raw time was 42:29. this placed us 6th after all of the various adjustments
Team photo whilst waiting for the results to be announced.
Unfortunately we did not win, the winning time was around 38 minutes that was then adjusted to about 37 minutes due to age handicaps, but we all agreed we had a great time and would definitely do it again.