St Catharine's College Boat Club

Bumped Magdalene in the gut (completing the day 2 Catz-Magdelene men's triple M1/M2/M3)

Start order: 17 King's, 16 Emmanuel, 15 Catz, 14 Magdelene, 13 Robinson

After a confidence-boosting bump on Wednesday we arrived at the boathouse today asking the question 'when?' as opposed to 'if?'.

We had a good relaxed start, with Emma nowhere to be seen. We had taken half a length by the motorway bridge and continued to eat up the gap to give us overlap by First Post and the inevitable bump came after the first 5 strokes of our first power 10. A much more self-assured race than yesterday, indeed described live on CamFM by Will H (our confident 6 man) as 'easy'.

Tomorrow brings the much greater challenge of hitting a twice-rowed over Robinson before they hit a spooning Tit Hall (although only bumped at the Railway Bridge today by a Clare crew who aren't that slow). Bring it on.

Bumped by Kings W2

Having been chased by Emma the day before, Catz had a good idea of their capabilities, and came to the race quite rightly expecting a strong performance. This was reinforced by a near perfect practise start, while watching a shambolic Emma effort disappear into the distance behind. The real start was almost as good, and a superb line from Harriet and a solid push from the crew saw the distance cut to just over a length within 30 strokes, the Robert Hardie radiating more intent than has been seen in memory, as the characteristic backswing made its presence known. 

Unfortunately this proved unsustainable, and as Emma hit their rhythm and managed to slow their backward plunge to a limp (although not entirely eliminating it...) the first crab came. With Kings steaming up behind, Catz produced an astonishing push to gain clear water from a good 2 feet of overlap, but Kings didn't want to play ball, and ended the game with their own push.

Overall, a really impressive performance from effectively a scratch crew - bring on the return bump on Kings on Friday.   

Bumped Magdalene M3

Flying high on yesterday's success, Catz looked to have a good shout today. With most relevant parties expected to bump out early, we proposed the standard race plan - keep FaT pushed off at the start, wait for everyone to bump out, then grind down Magdalene and hit them somewhere around Plough Reach.

Naturally Magdalene were less keen on this, and successfully foiled our plans by the somewhat eclectic method of being bumped less than halfway there. Regardless of their casual contempt for my plan, Catz rowed an excellent race, looking neat and tidy off the start, then hammering the power home round the first corner, taken excellently by Jamie, and never letting up.  Same again tomorrow please.