We all had an exciting day at The Burton Head. Here are my tales of the head.

At a pre-race meeting attended by all officials & general lackey’s (like me) in TRC. I was given the rank of Commander of an Umpire launch by Dear Dr John & was asked to deliver the Umpire safely to a position upstream of the Burton Sprint Regatta start.

Division 1: No problem I duly delivered the said umpire up to our position, we tied up to an overhanging tree, turned off the engine & waited & waited for the racing crews to approach us. During our wait we tried to put the world to rights & after much discussion, shoulder shaking it was decided between us that we could not really do too much to change our lot, so, we must just enjoy. Not long after the end of our chat, four youngsters appeared like a rash, approached our moored position, they looked at our predicament, being tied to a tree, then tried to encourage us to move off their bank by lobbing copious amounts of stones in our general direction, luckily their hand eye co-ordination was not that good, they missed the undefended target, perhaps a little more practice on the dart board was required.

I tried to reassure the Umpire that this was only a term of endearment by the natives, but he gave me the look that said "Oh Yea, on your bike". After a short bombardment the four treasures decided that they would go & menace elsewhere, leaving us with a long line of expletives, that basically invited us to go forth & multiply, the joy of well educated youth.

The first division was incident free. After the last competitor passed our position, the fun started, I released our anchor to the over hanging tree, drifted down stream, had no luck starting the launch, we were rescued by Terry Roe, towed for a while, but eventually I managed to get our engine to burst into life & trundled back triumphantly to the clubs under our own steam.

At the club Jenny prepared a magnificent & most welcomed bacon buttie, this was devoured, now I am ready.

Division 2: Joined by another Umpire, this time delivered him safely to the same position as our previous skirmish with the natives.

Tied up.

Watched the head from our privileged position. No hostilities at all this time. After the last sculler had passed us we cast off from our position, collected a marshal from the other bank & head down stream. As we passed pleasantries on our way downstream, bang, we had connected with the bottom, the engine immediately stopped, not even a cough or splutter, just an immediate silence. A more knowledgeable chap sitting in the launch with me, said the engine had a gear box problem, I looked inside the launch but could not see a wardrobe anywhere, so I bowed to his superior wisdom & we were rescued/towed homeward by Mr Bob in the TRC "Trusty Steed", as we were being towed, I practiced my wave to all on the bank. One cheeky oarsperson raised his right hand showing just 2 fingers, I think he wanted me to wave with both arms, so I gladly
obliged, even raising my woolly hat in my right hand to show I appreciated his affectionate gesture.

Since this momentous day I have been offered a number of honorary posts with the best offer being "Rope Knotter in Chief of the Trent Navigation of the Grand Order of Barge (Launch) Towing" - this apparently goes back to the days of horse drawn barges where the Chief Knotter not only tied all the knots in the ropes but even collected the stuff the horses left behind that was good for the roses, do you think I should accept this office or wait for a better offer?

Did I just have bad luck with the launches or did the launches just have bad luck with me, or was it a purposeful act to gain attention ??????

Life is a puzzle!!

I think we should all congratulate all involved in the organisation of the head, great effort, well done.

Three divisions next year?

Now we are back to Winter Training - long ergs, weights, long low rate paddles. Let’s go for it, raise that bar, challenge yourself.