The DRAW!

Good evening all,

(probably good morning actually...). It's Sunday evening over here and I'm outside savouring another long English summer evening after another perfect day - this is really turning my long-held and much-reinforced opinions of English weather on their head.

We had a long paddle as planned yesterday and got our first taste of the predicted Henley slop. There were massive numbers of crews out training on the course, which is really no wider than the Yarra, plus 40 or 50 motor craft of varying shapes, sizes, speeds and wakes ploughing up and down the transit lane. The floating barriers which line most of the course attenuate this wash to a surprising degree, but you still cop a real washing machine effect at certain points of the course, most significantly over the last 3 or 400 metres. So we definitely don't want to leave any attacking til this late in the race.

Fortunately though, we had really quite a good row, handling the poor water pretty well. The boat seems to cut through the slop with pretty minimal upset (in this regard at least, it seems better than our own Sykes boats). The crew are finding it easy to find a good platform regardless of water condition, although Nicole says the steering is still very touchy and very susceptible to any variation in oar pressures or even slight loss of balance - so we can't get too comfortable without a kick up the arse from her! Following the video session we have made a few small changes to our body psitions and timing, particularly off the start and these have paid dividends - we are certainly slicker out of the blocks than previously.

Despite the good rowing, it was a draining session, mostly mentally, so we made the decision to have a full day away from the river today and do some sight-seeing. Nic, Conrad, Cindy and I travelled down to Stonehenge, then up to Bath for the afternoon, very pleasant but I won't bore you with details here! Shane has gone to catch up with friends in London and Bingles found Tank World (sorry, Tankfest - that's tanks that move and shoot, not hold water) and unsurprisingly, made lots of new friends and got thrown out of the museum at closing time. He was unable to find the time to visit Monkey World, so is not entirely satisfied.

Following yesterdays paddle, we trekked up to Henley Town Hall for the Draw. Sure enough, there were the aged, distinguished and be-blazered Committee of the Henley Boat Club seated at the High Table with the ridiculously ornate Grand Challenge Cup placed front and centre. Each event was drawn one by one to much oohing and ahhing from the packed hall. Bingles has some video of our draw which we hope to upload to this site - it should give some insight into the atmosphere.

The relevant details of our draw are mostly good news. We meet Nottingham Union Boat Club first up at 5pm GMT on Wednesday. They qualified on Friday and according to our local form experts, are not travelling as well as they might be. Nevertheless, we will treat them with the greatest of respect, we hear they have a cracking start. Should we manage to get through Wednesday's race, we'll have a day off on Thursday and likely race Poplar/Blackwell on Friday assuming they win their first round. They are a seeded crew so will no doubt be very tough.

The really good news is that we are on the opposite side of the draw from the crew from Tideway Scullers School - one of the premier London clubs. Tideway are the form crew of the English season, yet to be beaten. Their crew contains a South African and an Australian, Al Taylor, from Mercantile, whom many of you may know. They are pretty well credentialled and are the deserved favourites for our event. But, we can't meet them before the final, should we get that far. Our UK and Irish contacts tell us that we couldn't really have hoped for a better draw, so there goes our last remaining excuse!

We move into Henley tomorrow (Monday), so my next post will be from there after our morning session.

Cheers, Drew