For our 3rd event of the season the weather was again reasonably kind to us so the brand new gazebo served mostly to protect us from the sun. We had a good turn out giving Stephen a little choice as to crew and positions and we lined up full of enthusiasm against WAM, Three River Serpents and Henley Dragons – all Premier crews – for our first 200m heat.
Our original recorded time of 1.01.02 placed us 4th but this turned out to be an error and the final result gave us 59.07 and 3rd place. This was a great result which sent us into the 3rd repechage next to Amathus Bees, Cole Norton and Amathus Wasps. We again came 3rd with a time of 1.00.11 placing us in tail race 1, against WAM, Amathus Bees, and Fallen Angels. 3rd place here kept our self respect high by coming in more than 3 seconds ahead of WAM.
This ended our involvement in the 200m and just over an hour later we found ourselves on the start line for the 1st heat of the 500m races. During the wait it’s possible that Sparky got too much sun, because he thought he saw a seal in the dock. Bless.
We had again drawn a heat against 3 premier crews: WAM, Three River Serpents and Henley and we again came 3rd with a time of 2.11.76. We are nothing if not consistent! This time however we earned ourselves a place in the 2nd rep. Before the start of the reps the starting line was moved, making all subsequent times longer but our time of 2.27.92 brought us in in 2nd place and we were through to the 2nd semi-final of the Plate competition.
Two other crews lined up with us and it was a close run thing but we won the semi-final in 2.32.60, only 0.88 secs ahead of WAM and leaving Amathus Wasps far behind. We then had very little time to stay warm and take our place in the Plate Major Final against Amathus Dragon Jockeys, Notts Anaconda and WAM. This was serious! And we were seriously ‘up for it’ and with a supreme final effort we won the final and our first trophy of the season in 2.33.29 leaving WAM over 2 seconds in our wake in 2nd place.

Another error saw the organisers try to give us 2nd place but we sorted it out and our trophy was collected by our overseas visitor Adrienne on her last day paddling with Exe-Calibre. A most successful day!

Full Race Results (pdf file)