The Thames novices, masters and junior squads have been busy picking up pots at a series of summer regattas over the last few weeks.

Tideway regattas

At Borne at Chiswick Regatta, the juniors won three events – Bruno won Open 1x (tier 2); Tilda WJ17 1x; and Sasha WJ16 1x.

Moving on to Putney Town Regatta, the men’s novices stamped their authority on tier 2 open 8s with a decisive win over Vesta, while the women’s novices beat HSBC and then Godolphin & Latymer in women’s 8s.

A little later Till and Stephen found themselves up against each other in the final of masters 1x, with Till coming out ahead.

Both the men’s and women’s novices also raced in 4+s. The men beat Sons of the Thames in their heat but lost to a solid Poplar Blackwall & District crew in the final; the women had a bye to the final where they lost a hard-fought tussle with Godolphin & Latymer’s top 4+. In open 2x Matt and Josh had a great debut race, losing to a tidy crew from Globe.

Twickenham Regatta

At Twickenham regatta Tilda and Sasha won WJSch 2x and Hannah followed up with a win in WJ15 1x in the morning. In the afternoon Till and Carlos sailed smoothly through to a win in MasC 2x and Joel, Michael, Harry, Paddy and Laura won Open 4+ comfortably.

The 8s racing was the most exciting of the day.

The novice women’s 8 won their heat without any difficulty, but in the final against Vesta the wind made steering tricky and there was an early clash in which Thames came off worst. However they pulled back level only to clash again at the finish as Vesta steered for faster water. Both crews appealed, and were sent back to the start.

In the rerow, Thames, on the trickier Middlesex station, were hit by waves early in the race, suffered a crab, and again had to get back in the race. Despite being over a length of clear water down they quickly regained contact on Vesta and moved through to win by one foot after some classy and level-headed rowing.

The novice men’s 8 cruised through their heat and looked to have won the final after opponents Vesta hit the bank early on. However Vesta appealed for a rerow, citing broken steering, and as the regatta was cleared away and after the stakeboats were lifted the men went out for another race. Vesta had the fresher legs, and eventually prevailed by half a length after a hard-fought battle by the Thames men.

Summer pot-hunting