To the Sailing Club!… midway on Saturday afternoon for a friendly WivGigs social row. This was always going to be a chaotic row with plenty of jeopardy and confusion for us to overcome.
The Rowhedge Regatta was in full flow ahead of launching. We also had the tricky task of landing at the public pontoon to pick up a potential new club member who wanted to give rowing a go.
The session got off to a comical start when the cox unveiled an interesting new look. A new pair of waders have been bought by the club. They are a luminous yellow with navy blue boots on the other end. It’s hard to take a cox seriously and follow their instructions when they look like a character from Rainbow.
A little more serious was the launch. It was tricky to find some space when a car drove down the sailing club hard. I was surprised to see this happen, especially so when the fella taking his car, where it’s not allowed to be driven, was a prominent sailing club member.
I was placed on stroke for the afternoon. We took the strategic decision to head downstream at first to avoid all the confusion and chaos of the Rowhedge Regatta.
We had our rendezvous with the Come and Trier on the public pontoon. The Come and Trier came: he tried and I think he rather enjoyed himself. I would give eight, or possibly nine out of ten for his early efforts.
We were then back down to our main crew as we dropped off the Come and Trier once again. The weather had cooled down slightly and so this was a good opportunity to pick up the pace.
There was still plenty of river traffic around. The Wivenhoe One Designs that were out racing. We also almost came a cropper when a tacking small dinghy decided to zigzag whilst on a course collision with us. We escaped all the madness and continued pressing on downstream.
We heard some loud music coming from one of the remotest parts of the estuary bank. How bloody annoying, I thought. There was a rather romantic couple with their extremely loud Bluetooth speaker. My anger evaporated when the fella fired up Row, Row, Row Your Boat for us.
I’m never one normally for all the nature bollocks that take place throughout a row, but I did enjoy being tracked for a couple of minutes or so by a beautiful Essex Blue butterfly. It seemed quite content to bob along with us and enjoy the company.
I got to jump out of the boat at the end during the recovery. The cold water of the Colne was most pleasing on what was an incredibly hot and challenging afternoon.
