HOTY 2013 2 - Race Day

BREAKFAST
Race day began with breakfast.  The most important meal of the day and it was another laneway.  This time of Flinders lane.  Eggs Benedict and Coffee.

10:30ish we met in the foyer and walked a route that took us through Flinders st Station and then across a pedestrian bridge to South Bank?.  Then upstream to where the boats had spent the night.

We had missed the start (11:00am)  but walked to the start anyway.  In this race, entrants are grouped in "Divisions" based on average crew age & gender.  Well the gender isn't averaged.   There are men, women & mixed.  All the boats of a particular division are grouped together.  We line up four abreast in a pre determined arrangement.  The boats start in approximately 10 second increments.  Once all the boats of a particular division have started there is a break of 5 to 10 minutes before the next divisions start.
THE START
 The finer practicalities of lining up four abreast became clear as a crew who were running late and having difficulty deciding how to get to the start chose a tight course past us.  The wide angle lens of the camera does not really show how close they were.  In the picture below, you can see to the left of the cox, my (7) oar handle as I have pulled my oar inboard to stop the boat beside me hitting it.

 Another close call.  May have been the same boat.  Here you can also see that every boat has a bow number and also the cox (back of the boat and the man you can see in the camera shot) and the bow person, each have the boat number pinned to them.

 The white pillar-box on the right is the start line.  There were two guys in there and the window facing the river had a rope pulled tight vertically down the middle of the window.  On the left hand bank opposite them was a marker.  As each boat crossed the start line, they recorded the start time.

 The first part of our row was a slog fest.  We seemed to be rowing hard but the boat was not "running".  It would be nice to think we were neck and neck with the other boats but I have to confess that they came from behind.

On the right of this picture you can see spectators sitting on the launching area of "Scotch Colledge".  Somewhere around here a blue boat which turned out contain Nudgee rowers began to gain on us.  Fear is a wonderful motivator and as a crew we got our act together.  The rhythm impoved.  The whole thing felt better.  We were putting in more effort and able to build the pressure in the water.  Kept those dastardly foe at bey and crossed the finish line in front of them.

THE FINISH
On the right is the  Hawthorne Rowing Club.  Up ahead in the distance is the bridge that is the finish line.

Here we are just about to cross the finish line.  The killer was that when we cross we are not allowed to stop rowing.  I was stuffed.  My legs like jelly and my lungs in need of O2.  But we had to row, lightly, but still row to clear the finish line.

PUT AWAY

After we lifted the boat from the water, we carried it up stream to a park where there were lots of racks to store the boats.  In the picture below you can see Richard our stroke on the left.

BEERS AND PRESENTATION

Pictures to come


PACK & WRAP
 After the formalities wound down, we pulled the boat apart.


The disappointingly memorable thing about the pack up was waiting an eternity for the boat trailer to arrive.  In hindsight, in my view, we would have been better off rowing back downstream and dismantling and reloading the boats.  The original plan had been a return journey via tram with stops at a number of pubs.  We ended up with just the tram journey.


AFTER PARTY