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Weather gods in a black mood again
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By Neil Lewis
Northern Sculling Series
Cambois Head of the Wansbeck, 20 October 2001.
Course: 3000m from coast to country park.
Conditions: Wet beforehand. Cold. Breeze blowing with the course.
When you have to row out seawards up a Northumberland estuary you worry about tidal effects and brushing up your Dutch should you be swept into the North Sea. Thankfully when you're rowing out to the start of the Cambois Head on the Wansbeck, as Hexham's Hardies did last Saturday, this shouldn't be a problem as it's dammed. Or perhaps I should say weired. Dammed weired if you toppled over strapped to a boat. Go tell the God of the east wind that when he raises the swell, your blades do the opposite of what they do on the Tyne at Hexham and he might be having fun, but it's not helpful. And while you're at it have a go at the God of sand bar deposition, and the one of flotsam and the ones who invented buoys, bridge uprights and other rowers. Some of us hate the hour-long bobbing sit at the start surrounded by other boats, each capable of tipping us in let alone worrying about racing and what the Gods have in store.
And so for the third event in the Northern Sculling Series the Gods were out in force and lubricating our day with torrential rain as we rigged the boats in the mud. The meandering head course is over approximately 3km, the meander gradually changing each year and is a dash inland as if you've heard someone shout "Oi! It's your round". Half way is the boat-house and the beginning of the sting in the tail - the course narrows and narrows and you're tired enough to feel that you must be nearly finished when you get there. You're not, well you are, but in the knackered sense of the word. There's the full length of the Hexham Regatta course still to go and the early finishers are rowing towards you from behind, the ones you hate shouting "Only 700 metres to go!" and the others you also hate yelling "You're nearly there, mate!" Above you on the country park towpath whizzing along on his mountain bike, is clubmate Steve Edwards, exhorting you to pull on. His support is welcome really, but briefly he's on your hate list too, because he's on a bike, on dry land and wrapped up warmly.
Amazingly we all made it with differing degrees of success, from none whatsoever to quite good really. Roddy Findlay in only his second head got as far as the water, finding a crack in his sax board and so scratched. Brown and Christer rowed themselves to the consistency of limp rags, beat Berwick their arch rivals but still lost out to some younger doubles. Increasing in confidence with every race Doody Senior slowed to conduct a brief survey of sand bank displacement, and as for Lindsey and Lucy in the ladies double, well the Gods threw everything at them. Mulholland, without the comfort of his young Lola beneath him, had borrowed a boat from chums at Tyne RC and found it to be a relatively slow model, throwing out his usual meticulous calculations of windage, drag and variation around the Plimsoll line. Lewis was his typical self, saving his best, most powerful and elegant strokes for the row in to the landing stage. That just leaves our secretary, Lucy Siddle who probably put in HRC's best performance of the day, a measured row that will see her justifiably move up the start order in the weeks to come. She rows with the same quiet determination that she applies to moving our club forward.
20 Oct 2001
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