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)
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