W1 started their Lent bumps campaign strongly this year with a bump on Pembroke W2 in the middle of a four-boat sandwich with Darwin W1 chasing us and Pembroke chasing Robinson W1.
Our start was solid, but perhaps not as fast as we would have liked. Darwin were slowly gaining on us as we pushed off the railway bridge, but we could hear whistles in front and behind so we sat up and kept pushing ourselves along the course. Coming up to first post corner Darwin had two whistles on us and we were 3/4 of a length on Pembroke, when quite suddenly our cox was shouting for us to hold it up. We did so, and cleared in slight confusion. I could see that Darwin hadn’t hit us and so was hoping for a technical row-over, expecting that Pembroke had been forced to stop because of carnage ahead. After an agonising wait while our bank party conferred with the umpires, Camille confirmed to us that we had in fact been awarded the bump! It is rather unclear why Pembroke stopped rowing; possibly someone crabbed and they decided to easy to recover it. A poor choice, but one that worked to our advantage!
On Thursday we will be chasing Robinson W1, who Pembroke were closing on, so we’re hoping for another bump while Darwin clear Pembroke out behind us.
W1 would like to thank our bank party: captain Camille Lardy and boatman Tim Rhodes, as well as Sophie and Joscelyn from W2 for coming down to cheer as well. Special mention goes to our cox, Philip Wilkinson, who had to make the split-second decision to easy rather than crash into Pembroke, keeping us safe AND getting us the bump!
