Cygnet Weekly News

I hope everyone had a enjoyable and relaxing Easter and those who went afloat stayed afloat in the windy conditions. Lovely morning on Friday for the sculling pod who went up to the Pink House and beyond. Well done to the Oxford women and grudging not a bad effort to the Cambridge Men.

So the Head Season is over, Easter off and we are quickly into the regatta season. Let's keep the momentum we have going and get good club representation at the local regattas in April, May, June and some pewterware, points and de novicing. The good news is that regatta races down require hours of marshalling and are over and done in 4-6 minutes. Racing starts and side by side racing is a great adrenalin rush. But to win pots you going to have to race a heat, semi final and final. So on land we'll be focus on shorter sharper erg sessions, on the water we'll be working on racing starts and short high rate pieces to get up to sprint speed.

To plan which regattas we want to enter and find out who wants to race we will have a squad meeting after the erg session on Thursday 7th April.

Here's a list of some of the local regattas and some more distant ones that we generally compete in:

Sun 24th April Hammersmith Regatta

Sat 30th April Chiswick Regatta

Sat 14th May Putney Town Regatta

Sat 28th May Twickenham Regatta

Sat/Sun 4/5th June Met @ Dorney

Sat 11th June Barnes & Mortlake International

Sat 18th Marlow @ Dorney

Sat 25th Richmond Regatta

Thursday 29th June - Saturday 2nd July Henley Royals

Fri/Sat 8/9th July Henley Masters

Sat/Sun 23/24th July St Neots

Sat 30th July Henley Town and Visitors

Sat/Sun 20/21 August City of Oxford

We will prioritise our regatta entry at the squad meeting.

This week:

Tuesday Erg: 30 mins feet out R20

Thursday Squad Erg 4 x 1 k @ r 26, 28, 30, 32, 4 mins rest

Weekend: Please get your availability up to date please, it looks pretty sparse at the moment.

Further Ahead:

Sculling Camp 15-17th April. First chance to master the dark arts of single sculling. Also we want to get people out of 8s and into smaller boats - 2-, 2x and getting experience of steering. It is important to increase the pool of signed off steers to maximise the outings we get on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Sculling camp gives people an opportunity to bow steer in quieter conditions.

And everybody should read up on the Tideway Code in preparation for taking the steering test!!!

Have a good week, I'm not around this weekend but will catch up with everyone at the Squad Meeting

Jez