Town Bumps 2014 - Tuesday (Day 1)
A glorious day of bumping action, with ups and downs and a fine start in glorious weather to the pinnacle of the rowing calendar.
In brief: we're up one overall over the day, In more detail:
W3 - outside Combined Boathouse, after bumping 99's W6.
- W3 (up): a nice row from just before the motorway bridge closing all the way and a good clean bump at First Post.
- M3 (down): Unfortunate winners of the closely-fought "least number of strokes in the bumps" prize, going down the the City Presidents VIII. There have been some slightly odd-shall-we-say decisions about the order of the crews.
- W2 (down): a long row from the lock with all the crews ahead of them bumped out, holding off the crew behind until after First Post; they then got a bit tired and the crew behind closed them down at Grassy. They get to be sandwich boat today, if they can row over as head of W3 ahead of Rad 2.
- M2 (up): Managed to catch Cantabs M7, after only 35 strokes, I'm told, which sounds like the sort of bump you want. And good prospects for tonight as the crew now ahead of them rowed over.
- No known pix or videos so far...
- W1 (row over): Chased St-Neots all the way to the finish, apparently closing the gap down to maybe a length on the Reach, and nearly a canvas before the finish.
M1 - Up one to 8th
- M1 (up): We had Press behind us, who beat us by 3 feet in Nines regatta, and by 5 seconds in the timed race. And ahead of us, Champs 1, who no-one had seen. That turned out to be because they hadn't been out much; they looked a bit rough rowing up, and proved quite catchable: we had overlap not far past First Post, rowed in massively choppy water apparently hitting them several times, before they finally conceded just before Grassy. Which lead to some chaos trying to clear; there was some suggestion Press might have conceeded to the crew behind, but no. Ahead of us City 2 (hello Tom) caught Tabs 2 (hello Petr) so we're chasing Tabs 2 tonight.
- William Connolley