Whew!

We're through to the next round!

After a good warm-up, we had a nervous 15min wait before the start, eyeing off the other crew. Finally, the umpires boat arrived, carrying Cindy, Hugh and Amy (Shane's mum), hosted by our starter and umpire, 4 time Olympic Gold medallist Sir Matthew Pinsent! Who apparently is a very nice bloke.

Anyway, we blew the first 2 strokes, but still managed to pull out to about half a length lead by Temple (about 300m). By the Barrier (600m mark), we had a bit over a length and had settled to a nice rhythm. There was a strong headwind and a lot of chop and slop on the course, which we weren't expecting to be so bad. We seemed to manage it ok, and had eked out to about 2 lengths by Fawley (1000m to go). Nottingham came back at us with everything here, but we held them at about 1.5 lengths to the finish.

The last 1000m or so was all about holding form in the rough conditions, it seems as if we had the worst of the days weather, so our time of 7.39 is hard to compare to the 7.25's set in the mornings calm. Our next race will be against Poplar & Blackwall RC, who were too strong for Bexhall and will provide us with a very tough race. Naturally, the talk on the bank is all highly expectant of an easy Poplar win - we seem to carry the underdog tag regardless. :)

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We had great support today now that Amy and her partner Kevin have arrived, also some Ancient Mariners from Sydney popped up with a few cheers. All down the course we heard nothing but "go Notts", "come on Union", etc, until we reached 400 to go and clearly heard the bellowing "C'MON POWER HOUSE!!!". No-one who knows him will be surprised that we correctly identified Dave Scoullar amongst thousands of voices.

We're off out for dinner to celebrate the fact that we haven't completely wasted our time coming here. Day off racing tomorrow, I'll be back in touch when we know what our draw is for Friday. Thanks again to all the PHRC supporters in Oz, your faith hasn't been completely unfounded!

Cheers, Drew