BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!
From: Raggytash
Date: 07 Apr 21 - 01:13 PM

True Mo, Basically it is down to the awkward attitude of the regatta organisers.

A few years ago I had a long talk with two of them, they suggested it was down to the time and height of the tides.

I got a tide table and showed them that two weeks prior the BIGGEST differences in the tides was 100mm (about 4 inches) and 13 minutes.

They wouldn't talk to me after that!

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!
From: Mo the caller
Date: 07 Apr 21 - 12:36 PM

Ah, Whitby regatta. Cursed by those looking for accommodation for Whitby Folk Week when the 2 clash.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 07 Apr 21 - 09:16 AM

I used to run the boating lake too. (I wasn't a veteran.) The main qualification you needed was to be strong enough to lift the boats out of the water and turn them upside down to get the water out

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!
From: Raggytash
Date: 07 Apr 21 - 07:06 AM

Whitby in North Yorkshire has a regatta which today consists of rowing races, at sea. Various crews from 3 rowing clubs race a variety of distances depending on age and gender. The races, originally for yachts, have been going on for over 170 years.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Apr 21 - 06:45 AM

They entered him for rowing on the boat-race day
He lost his oar and m********** all the way
They won by half a length but were disqualified
For splashing the spectators on the Surrey side

Don't blame me: there's a thread on it! :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!
From: EBarnacle
Date: 06 Apr 21 - 07:37 PM

Emphases changed but based on fact. It's a good read.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!
From: Joe Offer
Date: 06 Apr 21 - 04:11 PM

Oh, are you talking human-powered boats? I was picturing the hydroplane speedboat races I used to watch on the Detroit River when I was a kid. Those were cool.

Human-powered boat races are cool, too. The Boys in the Boat is a "non-fiction novel" about the US boat team in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It's a fascinating book to read, even if I've never heard of a "nonfiction novel." I suppose that's a pretty good description, though. It's factual, but reads like a novel.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 06 Apr 21 - 03:52 PM

Possibly not to Olympic standard, which is why I always watch the Boat Race.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!
From: EBarnacle
Date: 06 Apr 21 - 11:55 AM

If you want to see good competitive rowing, get involved with one of the groups that use Whitehall boats. No college degree required.
First we build them, then we row them.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 06 Apr 21 - 08:08 AM

Sponsorship perhaps - orders from the cheque book for these extraordinary people to display the antics of some hideous disco before getting down to the serious business of rowing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 06 Apr 21 - 04:58 AM

Missed it. What is all this c**p about the name? GEMINI boat race????? It is, and always has been called The Boat Race the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race or the University Boat Race. Or have I missed something where Oxford and Cambridge Universities have merged to form Gemini Universities or universities have now been re-designated as geminis? Or are they now contesting the race in gemini dinghies instead of rowing boats.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 05 Apr 21 - 04:37 PM

Likewise polo!!

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 05 Apr 21 - 04:07 PM

”Unfortunately that was not sufficient experience to qualify me for either Oxford or Cambridge.

So I went to a lefty Polytechnic instead to study class war...”

You’d have fitted in fine at my local rowing club, pfr - all very ‘working-class”, not a university student or posh bloke among us, we were engineering shop-floor workers, electricians, car-mechanics, fire-fighters, office-clerks, A&E nurses, bus-drivers, you name it...

The idea that rowing is for public-school kids and Oxbridge students is very much out-dated and, quite simply, wrong-headed.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 05 Apr 21 - 03:36 PM

Why ever would I wish to write a poem about it??

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 05 Apr 21 - 02:46 PM

My grandad used to run the boating pond at a local holiday camp, when I was a kid.
I think he got the job because he was a Dunkirk hero,
and so was bound to know a thing or two about boats..

I'd get free goes on a rowing boat first thing in the morning on my summer holidays.

Unfortunately that was not sufficient experience to qualify me for either Oxford or Cambridge.

So I went to a lefty Polytechnic instead to study class war...

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 05 Apr 21 - 02:05 PM

They were excellent races, far better than those Thames Tideway processional nonsenses. Took me back to my competitive rowing days in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!
From: Rain Dog
Date: 05 Apr 21 - 01:38 PM

Have you by any chance written a poem about it?

Subject: RE: BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 05 Apr 21 - 01:16 PM

All the more interesting for us because they took place just a few miles from where we now go for our holiday!!

Subject: BS: Excellent Boat Races yesterday!!
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 05 Apr 21 - 11:59 AM

Excellent Boat Races from both men and ladies yesterday afternoon from the Great Ouse near Ely!!