We took two men's VIIIs, a four and a scull; and a women's VIII, to Peterborough Spring regatta on the 4th and 5th of June. The men's VIII (stroked by your humble correspondent) won IM3 on Saturday to our glory; and the rest was reasonably good too. This post will be thin on details on anything ut the IM3 VIII, and mostly pictures.

There was a mild headwind on both days. In the heat, the IM3 VIII beat Fitz (who were head of Div 2, and ended up going down two in Mays) and a slow crew from Nines. That left me rather nervous / dreading the final, because it wasn't clear how good the other crews would be. In the end we got a good start and a good race and with a strong effort over the first half were able to beat Fitz again, a rather better Nines crew, and UCL "comfortably", i.e. by more than half a length (1.7 seconds say the results). That's my second BR point. Had we but known, we could easily have had a third: we won IM3 in 3:17, IM2 was won in 3:24.

There's a Riggercam video of Nov VIII on Saturday because I coxed them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu_Z53y8fQ8. Notice the buoys appearing by the boat after about 4-5 strokes; that's because there was an explained swerve off towards strokeside at the start. And one of IM3 VIII: https://youtu.be/oqyVQWb9hW0; from the side, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzFIJWEuJ4Q.

Note: the official results gave the IM3 VIII 2:56.3 in the final. That would be glorious, but it isn't true, as the videos show. I contacted Peterborough to point this out, but I got no reply. The true time is 3:16. Even corrected, it was the fastest time of the day.

Results, Saturday:

* IM3: win in the final (crew: William, Dan, Matt, Conor, Simon L, Brian, Keith)

* Nov: 3rd in heat by 1.5 seconds to UCL and Leeds (crew: William; Simon E, Steve P, Steve O, Lewsi G, Ondrej, Mike PJ, Stuart, Lewis C)

* IM3 IV+: beat Sudbury in heat, 4th in final (Steven Andrews, Conor Burgess, Simon Lloyd, Dan McGreal; James Tidy)

* Nov 1x (Keith Lee): 3rd in heat

Sunday

If only we'd won enough points to be forced up to IM2 it would have been great, because again our times would have been good enough to win IM2. The IM3 VIII (now with Chris swapped in for Matt, I think) won our heat (York, a City crew, a Nines crew) but were clearly the slow heat; in the other, Warwick and Wolfson were faster. And when the final came round, something didn't click and we ended up 4th. The women's IM3 VIII lost in their straight-final. The IV came second in their heat, and then second to City of Oxford in their final.