Another row over, but much better performance than Tuesday. Our whole attitude was different, first day nerves out of the way.

Our start was more controlled, but before we knew it Corpus bumped Darwin in front of them, took about 30 strokes. Not much we could have done about that. Darwin were also very slow to clear, so Emily had to call a brief wind down. We responded very well without hesitation, moved through before she called to wind it up again.

Then it became our head race. We actually pushed properly when asked, pulled away from Emma II with ease. We responded well to the stoke/bow side pressure calls, as crews parked at the side and failed to pull their blades in, which Emily made very clear to them. Chasing an unlikely overbump on Pembroke II, it kept us motivated and gave us a purpose. Again Emily's awesome cornering ate into their lead. By the end we finished about two lengths off them, but I'm sure they were holding us off relatively comfortably.

Despite the fact that it was another row over, it felt so different to our first one. This time we didn't need to push that hard, we could have held Emma off far from our best. But we pushed anyway, we believed. Just like our head races where we were chasing the crew in front, we always row better.

A bit of a shame we didn't have this performance on the first day, Darwin to chase on Firday...