Head of the Charles

After a recce last year by three crews to the Head of the Charles in Boston, this year four returned, with all told, much stronger results.

In the club men’s and women’s fours we had two crews with minimum expectations of a top 10 finish, with top five as a serious goal. Both survived clashes and the dramas of this great course (the Hahnenkamm for coxes) with the superb finish positions of third each. To win a medal had not really, and rightly so, been thought about; just get a score on the board. This was a great result for these two young crews, which in the men’s case included two school leavers, a 19-year old and a 22-year old.

With a last minute substitution due to a certain head coach’s bad back playing up, the masters eight raced well to finish 28th out of 56 with a very smooth looking row followed by a strong performance on Boston’s social scene afterwards.

Our winning Thames Cup 8 was invited to take part and the crew did so with gusto, though with a variety of training regimes under their belts. A last minute sub was required when four-man Chris Morahan contracted appendicitis less than a week before flying out. A sub was found, of good quality, but wouldn’t be joining us until several hours before the race. In the end a rather poor row in an unfamiliar boat, combined with the ‘training regimes’ gave a rather lacklustre result of 23rd out of 26.

The crew did however present themselves at the British Embassy in fine order and escaped unscathed. Thames blazers were in abundance, medals were won, new friends and links were made and its fair to say a good time was had by all.