After the once-a-week introduction to new meanings of slides and stretchers in the Michaelmas Term, the novices started the Lent term with enthusiasm and determination to, do well. While the Senior trials confiscated their boats (!) work started in IVs, but almost as soon as their rightful craft were returned a protracted period of flooding set in. After several sessions of runs ('Nature Rambles' learning much of the surrounding countryside but little about rowing) and itching to get back in a boat, we took to the canal with useful outings, if somewhat long ones, still in IVs to the turning places at Claverton or Avoncliff – the first trips to the latter taking some three hours and ending after nightfall!
So by the time Avon County Head came along, there had been barely an outing in an VIII, and not much more for the Schools' Head at Putney. Nevertheless, the VIII were happy to win at the former, while the Quad now under Adrian Gayner's guidance was continuing to show promise and progress.
The Tideway event was rowed in conditions of sunshine and showers: but the latter were very heavy and the rain and river were whipped around angrily, conditions which not only soaked the crews as they went afloat, but which sank many crews on the way up to the start. Although cold and wet, the VIII and cox did well awaiting the decision whether the race should be rowed at all – the crew got out of their boat above St. Paul's, kept warm doing exercises on the bank, and were in remarkably good heart when after a very long delay the race go ahead was given once the tide had fallen considerably and conditions were less rough. Unfortunately after getting back into the boat it was immediately unrepairably holed on some large submerged boulders unseen in the murky pollution of the Thames. The crew abandoned ship and made it, just, to shore and struggled frozen with the wet and cold wind back to Putney along the towpath, leaving their gallant coach PGB to wade with the splintered semiwaterlogged boat back as far as St. Paul's, there to dismantle it before carrying the riggers back to Putney, and even attempting to carry the fore-section piggyback, unaided – but even he gave in after a few hundred yards and the wreckage was retrieved later by road. The Quad, equally wet and cold, did well to survive and complete the course without succombing to hypothermia.
By the beginning of the Summer Term, although the crews, an VIII and now two Quad IVs, were keen to do well at Avon County, after an itsy-bitsy term for the VIII in particular, they were short of sustained practice and experience of rowing together: but in spite of some mistakes in early rounds were able to do well enough in the last cuts of the day winning their Group. But morale was not as good as might have been hoped so that when on return to school the already planned swap round of coaches took place and BSM took over a change of direction and emphasis to get things going again was necessary if the crew was to be up going to the National Schools' event or indeed anywhere other than tank or bank. Changes in the crews and prolonged sessions on the Tank meant that at Wimbleball some improvements in both morale and technique had been effected, though there were problems in convincing the crew that one way not to go faster during a race is to put your heads down and pole along any-old-how, forgetting all the improvements in skill so tentatively and tenuously learned. This was to remain a problem throughout the rest of the Season, bringing with it the almost inevitable series of real boat-stopping crabs, lost or jammed seats and general lack of cohesion.
Even so, we were delighted with the form and promise at Nottingham where they were 2nd and Medal winners. Tewkesbury and Shearwater were both marred by reversion to rushing brainlessness, though the crew was still clearly distinctly fast when at its best.
The hopes that the lessons might be learned by the time we went for both A and B events at Reading Town for the last races of the season were only to be dashed. Although doing very respectably in the heat of the A event, in the B event they rowed not a single decent clean race. Even so, I reckoned they should win the final by some 3 or more lengths...indeed by half way we had over half-a-length of clear water when once again over-enthususiam and lack of control in the crew as a whole spelled disaster – who it was to be was in the realms of chance but that it would occur somewhere in the boat was almost a certainty: eight individuals poling away virtually independently can have only one outcome sooner or later. Unfortunately it was sooner than the end of the race and with perhaps only 150m. to go came a stoppage to beat all stoppages, losing an oar and the race together. A sad sad end to an up and down year - when up and with only the stopwatch to beat on home waters this was quite the fastest J14 crew for as long as I can remember: if the lessons are learned by whoever is in whatever crew for the J15 year then there's plenty of promise: at its best the B crew was full of potential,but they too lacked the control needed to prevent the rate going up and up and up while the boat would inversely and perversely against their enthusiasm and instincts go slower and slower and slower.
'If at first ' ...Let's set about it properly next January... Brains as wels brawn.