Lincoln to Boston 50.5km / 31miles
The day started rather more pleasantly than we (Dan Rowse and Dave Byrnes Mas C 2x) had expected and with a good tailwind, calm water and glorious sunshine, we made excellent time to Bardney Lock (13.5km), having overtaken many crews in the process….all going rather well and quite enjoyable.
However, after a swift boat carry around Bardney Lock, we were confronted with a rather different picture, a stiff headwind which fought against us for most of the remainder of the race and if rowing the remaining 36.km into a stiff headwind wasn’t enough, we were also met with many thick sections of weed covering the entire canal and reaching between 5m-100m long at a time! We passed an unfortunate single sculler who had fallen into the weed and looked like some kind of swamp monster, and also passed other crews whose stroke or cox were sliding gingerly down the stern canvas to try and free their rudders of weed!
We powered on overtaking crew after crew, which made us feel a little more positive about our progress despite the challenging conditions and pushed onto to the 30km mark. The last 20km just got harder and harder as fatigue began to set in and even the last 500m felt like a head race, but we finished a very respectable 2nd overall / Winner of MasC 2x / Fastest 2x overall and although as we crossed the finish line we swore never to do it again as we had ‘ticked that box’, but here I am writing the race report wondering whether we can go just a little bit quicker net year!
Result
2nd overall / Winner of MasC 2x / Fastest 2x overall
