After yesterdays easy rowover, we knew today would require a much bigger push. A fast Downing crew behind us, and a relatively quick Jesus crew in front meant we would have to really work for the bump.

The starts on the way down were very good, but a poor first 2 strokes got us after the cannon. We pulled it back together during a good wind and build and then slowly started settling into a rhythm around first post. By this time Downing had taken 1/2 a length of us, whilst we had only held station on Jesus. Out of first post, a few scrappy strokes significantly reduced our boat speed, whilst Downing continued to push up on us. Through the gut, we maintained station on Jesus, possibly taking a 1/4 of a length, but going into grassy Downing had 2 whistles and were coming in fast. Half way round grassy, after 3 whistles, they made their move - bumping us.

A combination of events, as a result of the Downing crew not knowing to hold it up, meant that they continued to row into us after the bump and we were pushed into grassy corner, damaging our bow, giving it a nice new look. Unfortunately no spare half boats knocking around the boathouse...

Wow, we had heard that they might not be too quick, so definitely had a good chance to catch them- but we also knew that sidney would be back out to get us. We managed to keep sidney off at the start- their strongest part- which was a real lift, and before we knew it, the whistles were coming thick and fast for us on corpus. Although we never had a chance to settle as the chop built up pretty quickly, we bumped Corpus just after the motorway bridge..... Encouragingly, the same spot that St Edmunds/the blue boat, bumped them yesterday...

Once again Queens' M3 started the day knowing the double row over could well be on.  Due to Rich leaving us for more important things in Oxford, (we really don't understand) Matt Symington subbed in admirably for us.

Our first race had a good strong Selwyn boat chasing us.  Round the corners they steadily ate into us until coming round ditton they were about a canvas off us.  However coming on to the reach all the fitness and ergs came good as we steadily just pushed off them all they way home, comfortably rowing over in the end.

Unfortunately this took a lot out of us before the second race and then when doing a practice start Matt caught an impressive ejector crab throwing him out of the boat.  This did not phase us and Matt simply swam over to the side came over and got back in the boat.  We headed down to the start but unfortunately couldn't properly excecute our race plan and started not as well as we could.  After struggling to settle we eventually did but by this time the race was already over as Darwin flew off the line trying to catch Tit hall.  We therefore just steadily rowed over eventually taking distance off Darwin but too little too late.

We go again tomorrow, good times