Hexham rowers headed to Durham Small Boat Head on Saturday 1st February on a relatively still but chilly morning.
The competition entries filled quickly for this very popular event and with the event being over-subscribed by over 100 crews, we unfortunately had a few master’s crews rejected with no competition, but were thankful to take 31 Hexham crews to the River Wear.
Junior crews were up bright and early for division one with eight crews out. Division two saw four masters crews join three junior boats, division three had six junior crews out and two masters and last but not least, division four saw three masters singles out with five junior crews for the last division of the day!
Crews taking to the water for division three:
The sun came out and the wind and waves from last week were thankfully not present on the River Wear this weekend, but there was a good flow on the river to give the rowers something to battle against as they made their way upstream from Prebends Bridge to just past the Bandstand via the infamous Elvet Bridge which didn’t disappoint for rowers or spectators.
Well done to everyone for racing, notable rows came from our Op J18 4x- who were the 4th fastest crew of the day after a good tussle with a Yarm crew in Div 1. Our W J18 4x- (b1) crew won their class and were the fastest women’s quad of the day, proudly showing off their medals below:
Well done to our two single rowers Ronan and James for winning the Op J18 1x (b3) and Op MasACD 1x respectively.
A composite crew of Hex/Tyne/Durham showed consistency racing in the Op4x- and Op MasCDEGH4x- categories with a time of 6:54.8 and 6:55.6 respectively, the latter making them victors of the Masters class. Full results from the day can be found here
Moment of the day must go to Shor for recovering from a close encounter with a rock which very nearly tipped the single over but Shor managed to right the boat and row to the finish with quite a lot of water in the boat!
Thank you to the event organisers, umpires and our fantastic supporters cheering our crews on from the bankside whilst trying to stay warm! Thank you to Julia and Michael for towing the trailers.
Next weekend we head back to Newburn for Tyne Head.
Photo credits: Catherine and Michael. More photos will be available here soon.
