Head of the Cam - results and round-up

The original Head of the Cam post got treated as a live document and updated as we went along. So this is a new post for the wrap-up.

Thanks to all our competitors, support, marshalls and umpires for making it a successful and fun day. We had a total of 860 rowing seats in 136 crews. The fastest crew was...

...yes, you guessed it, Caius. Congratulations. Fastest womens crew was, rather less expectedly, also Caius. They beat Downing by 14 seconds.

Full results are available from here (a number of people were kind enough to thank us for the speed of the results; its all thanks to googly docs). Video of the event is just going up as I speak at spannerspotter though it will be a while before its all up. For those of you who prefer the security and solidity of a PDF, this is the final results, sorted into time order.

Oh, and someone lost a pair of glasses in a kangol case on the towpath. If they are yours, do let me know [now reunited with their owner].

Issues

We didn't really have any serious issues - at least, we thought not. Hopefully you agree. Even the weather, whilst grey and occasionally a bit damp, spared us from downpours.

Turning boats back

We had to turn one, or perhaps two, boats back who were late for their division. Sorry about that, we don't do it lightly, and where possible we'll give you a chance to race in a later division. In at least one of the cases the boat was late because it had failed safety inspection: the heel restraints weren't in place and had to be put in place. Moral: check your boat is all in order in good time.

The Cow that could Swim

Half way through the race we were informed of a prodigy - a cow that could swim, on Stourbridge Common. We thought it best not to trouble you with that.

Improvements

We hope to make things even better next year - please feel free to email (headofthecam@gmail.com) with any suggestions. One thing I do want to do is to seed the draw better, probably by asking people to submit a recent head course time, or their own best guess.

Timing

Everything went well with the timing except the problem with boats 117 and 118, which was only resolved right at the end. Unfortunately it turned out to matter for the prizes for the W2 Mays. So let me bore you with the tedious details. Before I do that, the timesheets are available for div 1, div 2, div 3 and div 4. Feel free to look, but you won't learn much.

So, the sequence began with boat 115, Xpress MasB IV, which broke their rudder (they eventually and boldly started, and here is a nice pic of them trying to take Grassy with an improvised rudder, but they had to retire in the end). Their dropping out caused a hole in the start order, which got filled by Kings W1 (118) going off out of order ahead of Cantabs W IM3 (117). Not in itself a problem, but the start times and finish times as we got them looked like:

114 CCRC, CRA MasD 0:24:53 0:34:51 0:09:58
117 Cantabs, W2 IM3 0:23:31 0:37:57 0:14:26
118 Kings, W1       0:26:02 0:36:39 0:10:37
120 Cantabs, Mas E  0:26:54 0:38:38 0:11:44

You see the problem. Kings (it became clear) had started before Cantabs, indeed just before Cantabs, so 23:31 isn't a believeable start time; and Cantabs total time is implausibly slow. Eventually, after a considerable amount of indecision and hearing from both crews, we decided to go with Least Modification, and resolved the conflict by assuming the Cantabs 23 was really a 26. That fits with what the timings Kings coach gave us; and it also fits some times we got belatedly from video on Grassy: Kings had gained 18 secs on Cantabs by then. ps: Champs head vindicates us. Kings W1 did well there, too.

Refs

2011

The DIWLF boat does Oxford

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To Ely and back

We were going to enter Boston - indeed, we did enter. But come the draw and we still hadn't found a trailer, and the reason became clear: there were no other crews going from Cambridge (other than Katherine and Anna-Rosa, who won their class; but they were in a double, and didn't need a trailer). It rather looks like the organisers hadn't publicised the change-of-date widely, and only had 1/3 the normal number of entries.

And so we thought: rather than all the faff of trailering there, why not "just" row to Ely and back, which is about the same distance (actually 51.5 km, starting from Queens's boathouse, over Boston's 50). And so we did:



That is our route, annotated, from the GPS trace. You'll see we stopped a bit: Baits Bite (5k) and Bottisham (10k) locks were necessary, as was the pint at the Cutter Inn at Ely. Upware (5 miles from anywhere pub; 15 k) was a lovely sprawled-in-the-grass-with-drinks stop on the way back, and I think we happened to stop to adjust footplates there on the way up. And then the formerly-Fish-n-Duck at the junction of the Old West river was another landmark, 20 k. Note that at some points where we had long stops (Ely, Upware on the way back) I stopped the watch, so you don't see the full gap.



Our proof that we really did get to Ely :-). and if that isn't proof enough, here is more:

My hands - taped to match my nail varnish. When oh when oh when will I learn to tape up my hands properly before getting blisters?	Paul's hands - worse than it looks from a distance. And he was taped up like an extra from The Mummy.	James Howard's mighty Blister of Doom. I added the arrow in case you missed it.

There is no picture of Will's hands - apparently, as a result of some odd formative experiences at Eton, he doesn't get blisters ;-).

John-from-Pippin was kind enough to let us through Bottisham lock both ways (side note: if you had no friend but you had the key, you could probably do it by letting the cox out at the landing stage, though the Cambridge side is awkward. It almost looked possible to get out on the bank before the stage, which (if possible) would be much quicker than waiting for the lock gates to move). And on the way back, he even more kindly lifted over a few cans of Old Speckled Hen in a net, and then mugs of tea for James and Will (not in a net).



Here we are in the lock, on the way up. James H has a somewhat worried expression, because I've insisted that James T stand up to take the picture, and (as you can see) we don't really have our blades out very far. I've cropped the picture to spare you the worst of my pallid chest - I rowed up Topless, though actually it wasn't warm despite the blazing sunshine, so I rowed back Topped.

The very last adventure of the day was discovering, half way down the reach, that we'd lost our rudder. Watching James's face was quite funny, as it slowly dawned on him that pulling the strings was doing nothing. But he then did an excellent job of coxing us back just with extra pulls from either side as required.



At the end, we could still smile (L to R: Paul Holland; William Connolley; James Howard; Will Wykeham. Front: James Tidy). Because we knew we were headed for the Fort. But how was it, overall? Fun, yes. An interesting excursion and definitely something different and something to remember. Hard work - we didn't just pootle along, or even back (the GPS says avg ~13 km/h on the way out, which is 2:18. And a bit lower on the way back - perhaps 12.5, which is 2:24. Tiredness, or difference in rover flow? Those GPS splits are about 5 pips worse than the impeller splits we were getting at the time). Would it have made a decent time if we'd been doing Boston? Hard to know - we wouldn't have got all the rests, so the split would probably have sagged somewhat from what we have here. We'll find out next time!

[Update: oh, and I forgot to mention: we got off to an appallingly bad start: as we passed under the Fort footbridge, having taken about 20 strokes, James H said "are we nearly there yet?" in a perfectly deadpan voice; I could hardly row for laughing for a minute.]

Refs

* GPS track