Northwich Autumn Head 2014

The 2014/15 campaign started with a trip to Northwich which is a busy and popular autumn time trial over 2350m on the river Weaver. The usual early morning start saw us running to schedule, hooking up the trailer at the Army camp by 05:50, on the motorway at 06:15 and arriving through the gates of St.John Deane's College, Northwich before 08:00.

Division 1 Results.

Having 'bagged' our customary trailer slot in the car park, Mr.Yates and Roman Bell rigged their single sculls and joined the queue of scullers paddling up the river for the first division. The rest of us rigged crew boats and woke up more gradually. DY (09:31) put up a good performance in IM1 against a rather large Grange School J18(?) sculler called Ozsanlav-Harris (09:20) and Roman Bell came 6th in the IM3 category.

A nice clean area to rig boats!

Thanks to DY for writing the report on Division 2 and 3 results (below) and to Mike Gelder for supplying the better quality photos in this report.

Division 2 and 3 Results.

LRGSBC had 2 double sculls competing in the Junior 15 double sculls competition. The crew of Thomas Kerr and Lewis MacPherson led off the division and put in a strong performance to finish in 3rd place just 0.2 seconds behind the crew from Hollingworth lake. Ben Hesletine and Will Burrow set of at the back of the division and had to steer a trickier race overtaking crews on the narrow course to finish in 4th place ahead of crews from Grange School, Mechant Taylor's School and North Staffordshire Rowing Club.

In the coxed quads division LRGSBC again had 2 crews competing. The B crew of Ben Hesletine, Will Hornby-Phillips, Liam Targett, Jamie Morphet, coxed by Joe Gelder battled the length of the course with Warrington Rowing club's B crew to finish in 6th place out of 9 beating the A crews from Merchant Taylors School, Hollingworth Lake and Runcorn Rowing Club. The A crew of Caiden Whittaker, Tom Kerr, Will Burrow, Sam Gelder, coxed by Chris Hopkinson set off at the front of the division and produced a classy row leaving the Warrington A and Grange School A quads in their wake. A fantastic performance saw them win the event by 17 seconds.

J15 4x+

J15 4x+ A

Congratulations to the novice coxed 4 of Vipin Kammath, Tom Nixon, Adam Fyfe, Joe Unwin and cox Roman Bell. They produced an excellent performance to win the event by just 4 seconds ahead of Bishop Vasey's Grammar School and well ahead of their other opposition.

Novice 4+

The Junior 17 coxless quad of Dan King-Cox, Cameron Stuart-Burgess, Oliver Tidswell and Josh Mapp produced a fine row down the course finishing 2nd to Northwich Rowing Club. This was still a fine performance and saw the lads finish as the 6th fastest crew of the entire day out of nearly 300 crews in total.

J17 4x-

The final crew to race were the novice double scull of Vipin Kammath and Rayhan Munavvar. With 700m to go they were leading the event but unfortunately whilst overtaking their opposition they were forced wide and clipped a buoy causing them to "catch a crab" unfortunately ending any chance of them winning the event.

Well done to all the boys competing for such great performances throughout and for the support of the parents at the event. We were back on the road by 17:15 and returned to School by 19:30.

J15 4x+ medals

Full results can be found at Northwich RC's website: http://www.northwichrowing.co.uk/events.php

New Rescue/Coaching Launch

A new Zodiac 3.10m rib has been purchased with the help of a donation from The Sports Hall Management Committee. The boat will act as a new rescue/coaching launch. Like all boats, this essential item of equipment does not come cheap and we are very grateful to the Committee for stepping in and helping. We had been running with one small launch so far this term as the ex-sailing club launch which we were also using has now perished.

A virtually new 2-stroke 15 hp Yamaha engine was wisely bought last year as part of a two engine deal with Pennine Marine of Skipton. The new launch, which was also supplied by Pennine Marine, is correctly matched with the size of the engine and they run very well together.

The arrival of the new launch coincided with some R.O.C.A.P. parents qualifying as RYA level 2 Powerboat drivers, who enjoyed their familiarisation with the new boat.

Launching the new launch!