After the rain and damp of last years event, it seems everyone came prepared for the worst, we even had two gazebos, lucky for us they were not needed to keep out the rain even though at times the skies looked ominous.

With a minimum crew of 18, and people not paddling on their usual side (thanks Dave!) we knew we had a busy day ahead. The use of Amathus's boat was much obliged (ahh the leg room), and the first 200m after some time lining up the four boat went off with out a hitch. With only 2.5s between BA's first and our third place of 49.78s, and into rep three against Pershore phoenix (a team we never seemed to shake during the rest of the day), Raging and Wraysbury Dragons. A very respectable second place at 51.02 but was only enough to get us into the second 200m tail race which was sill extremely close with less than one second between first (49.48 and last 50.2s) and Execalibre getting 3rd at 50.00s.

After a long lunch break it was on to the 500m with an early warm up and some rearranging in the boat, we were ready for our best event against Thames Raging, Typhoon Tigers and Pershore Phoenix. There was only one problem though... Steve could not find his paddle, after much searching and him saying 'I know I left it with my stuff, some one must have stolen it!' we went out to race with Steve holding an unfamiliar wooden paddle, reaching a time of 2:05.91, which meant we had a very quick change over into the second rep. By this time it had been pointed out to Steve (by Chrissie) that he had left his paddle in a bush (to keep it safe), thus in the future misplacing your paddle will be known as 'doing a Stephen'.

The 2nd rep was very exciting as we managed to keep on with Thames Raging and BA Hurricanes for first third of the race, however there was a slight mishap where Pershore (who I might add were in lane 4) caught lane 2 and 3's wash and came spinning off toward Execalibre in lane 1. It was a very close call for Lisa and Kerry who without Sparky's quick thinking who pushed Pershore's head away from us, would have been in a collision. Because of the above excitement we may have lost a second or two with a time of 2:07.89.

This placed us into the first plate semi final, where Cool Runnings, Amathus Bees and Pershore were ready to take us on. Once again this was a very tight race for first, second and third with less than 2 seconds in it. 2:02.63 was Execalibre's time for 3rd place which could have meant that we would make it into the plate final were it not for Worchester being slightly faster than us in the next semi.

Our last race of the day was in the Plate minor final which resulted in a time of 2:05.06 against Pershore Phoenix (again), Kingston Pretenders and Wraysbury Dragons. While we were disappointed that it was less than half a second between us and Kingston, we need to remind our selves that for a crew that had not had any change overs and people paddling on the wrong side we did really well.

To cap off the day nicely, a ladies 200m invitational was organised where Execalibre joined with Henley and Bristol to form the Sirens. They paddled with perfect timing to come in third with a time of 54.43, to Thames Amazons 52.37, Kingston Ladies 53.07 and Secksters 56.16.

Well done to every one who paddled and Glens fan club!

Full Race Results (pdf file)