Cambridge rowing team

[Wansworth]

This seems a very sensible plan. It will avoid this sort of thing:

I still picture the scene - in the half light of a January dawn. We had broken the cat ice to get the college first boat into the water. I was the cox. All went as well as might be expected (and we were quite good) until, on our way back to our boathouse, when we were just below the iron bridge, we heard the not unexpected cry of “Blue boat!”, which meant of course that we had to pull over to the non-towpath bank and give them a clear path.

I did so, but my un-breakfasted and cold brain had failed to process the information, well known to me and to every other college level cox who was even halfway competent, that just below the iron bridge on the green side there was a submerged wooden stake with its tip just below the surface.

I managed to puncture a rather expensive new shell eight. And aye the Cam came in. Lacking a web o’the silken claith, lacking indeed a bailer, all we could do was try to pull for the college boat house before we sank. We got there just as we did sink.

It was thought good by eight large fit young men with wet feet and shorts to throw the cox into the river. And this was done…

They will get fat on chorizo,pan and vino?

 

[Bajansailor]

I managed to puncture a rather expensive new shell eight. And aye the Cam came in. Lacking a web o’the silken claith, lacking indeed a bailer, all we could do was try to pull for the college boat house before we sank. We got there just as we did sink.

When I was at Uni, I was in the Boat Club for a year, also as a cox - my mate Giles was the cox of the 2nd Eight, and I was with the 3rd Eight. Both boats were wooden - the 1st Eight was high tech composite (this was 1985), and much admired.
Giles listed on his CV his main claim to fame at Uni as sinking his Eight in a head of the river race on the Thames, where Giles misjudged the current, and managed to collide head on with a big steel mooring buoy. The boat sank pretty quickly, and the crew literally just had time to get their feet out of the straps before they were in the water, being swept down stream fast, while yelling obscenities and death threats at the cox who had somehow managed to scramble up on to the buoy before they sank, and stayed dry.
The crew were grateful later on though, as they managed to get their old wooden Eight replaced with a nice new composite Eight, so all was forgiven with Giles.

When I rowed, that was done at the end of a race that was won. Unfortunately for our cox, we were quite good.

Fortunately for me, my crew took drinking and womanising more seriously than rowing, so we would often go rowing at first light with half (or more) or the crew somewhat hungover. This meant that we never won anything, so I managed to avoid getting chucked into the river.

 

[boomerangben]

I learned to row at Uni in a boat named Tenesmus. It was a large stable and unbelievably heavy boat, named by medical students several generations before. Never has a boat had a more appropriate name

Noun: tenesmus |tu'nez‑mus| Painful spasm of the anal sphincter along with an urgent desire to defecate without the significant production of faeces; associated with irritable bowel syndrome This definition is from WordWeb