Conditions: overcast, wind on reach, but sheltered for rest of course.

Order: 6th Downing - 7th Queens' - 8th Trinity Hall

After a strong start, we moved into the rough water stirred up in front of us at a good pace. Downing had gone off at an angle, but settled into a good pace too, and we held roughly on station until coming up to first post. By this time, we had made 1/4 length on them. Moving into FP, we put in a small push and took 1/4 length. Moving through the gut, we settled into a better rhythm as we kept moving up on Downing. Into grassy we had really made some ground up, getting a strong two whistles.

However, we were pushing a bit wide, and unfortunately decided to take a short break to park on grassy. After everyone had refreshed, we pushed back off the bank. Fortunately we weren't getting pressure from behind us, but Downing had gained about 4 lengths from this manouevre, so as we settled back into a race rythm, they were three lengths ahead. 

We had a nice row to the finish, but made no significant ground on them, as Downing continued to pressure Pembroke, who got the bump on LMBC very near the finish.

Bring on tomorrow.

The rain had been pouring down on our row down on the first day of bumps. We nifitly emptied our boat of water just before jumping in and got ready for the gun. Having beaten Jesus III by 10 seconds or so in the last race we were confident we could catch them over the course but all had the confidence that if we rowed well we could catch them early.

Our start had never been a strong point but we got off okay with Darwin II catching up slightly behind us but soon fading. After settling into a steady rate of around 32 we started to catch slowly on Jesus. The first whistle took a while to come but after that we started taking off distance more and more quickly. Just as we hit Grassy corner we had overlap and to try and avoid the bump the Jesus cox took a wide (REALLY WIDE) line round grassy and crashed into the bank giving us the bump.

A maiden bump for many members of the crew which was great but so far it was simply job done !

Having beaten the boat directly in front of us by 26.1s in the Champs Head and had almost daily outings in an eight throughout exams, we were confident of being faster than FAT II. Our worries were the Wolfson and St Edmunds first boats two in front and directly behind us, as we hadn't seen them all term.

15 minutes early at marshalling, so we had a relaxing sing-song, including a full version of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, then rowed up tidily.

Starting from 7th is an unpleasant experience. Sharing the space under the bridge with the cannons, all the calls in the draw strokes were wasted on a deafened crew. Special mention has to go to Abi, who was under the bridge, on a windy day, in bow pair of her first ever bumps race and had far too much to do as we ran out of chain; leaving Chris leant out the back of the boat and myself with a far better look at St Edmunds than i wanted!

We set off with our characteristic balanced and high rate start (46 off the winds) and had settled to a neat but maybe not sustainable 37 with one whistle already; then Chris started calling the start of our kill. The next few stokes had a note of incredulity in the crew that we could be so close, so soon but the power built going into First Post with the inside line and overlap.

And then there was a big bang. We hope their boat was not expensively damaged in a collision that moved all the Queens' girls across our seats.

Having got FAT already, we went back to the boathouse and ate cake.