(not sure we need the extra boats though!)
As we are perhaps becoming rather too accustomed, the winds of the preceding month dropped, the skies cleared and the rowers arrived. It must be time for the Inverness Fours and Small Boats Head 2024 which always forms a highlight of the Scottish Rowing Callender. The popularity of this event seems to just grow and grow with year on year record entries: this year being no exception with over 700 crews taking to the glassy water of the Caledonian Canal and our 4500 m Head Course, with racing was divided into 3 divisions on both Saturday and Sunday.
Perfect conditions greeted rowers in the first division on Saturday with the calm on the canal only being broken by the first boat down the course, disrupting the stunning reflections of the warm autumnal colours. The first division saw success for Inverness Rowing Club with Steven Andrews rowing in a composite with Neil Paul (originally from the Black Isle) of St Andrew Boat Club who took the masters 2- in a raw time of 17:26. Success continued in the second division with Alan Sinclair taking the masters 1x in a raw time of 17:59. The Inverness juniors placed second in the J15 2x, stroked by Shay Hammock, and Ciaran McManus also took second place in the masters novice 1x. Second place seemed to be in fashion for Inverness in the third division with both our masters 4- (17:48) and women’s masters 4x (19:37) both coming home one off the top spot.
Sunday dawned a little less bright and a few showers cooled things down a little but the rowing conditions on the canal remained good. In the first division Alan Sinclair took advantage of the conditions to knock 20 seconds of his time from the previous day, this time taking the open 1x in 17:38. Sam Roxburgh also put in a great time in the J18 1x, coming third in 18:31. Division 2 saw more Inverness success with Tim Latham and Adrian Hopkins putting in an excellent performance to narrowly defeat HWBC, winning the R2 2- in 19:01. Wilbur Grant also took gold in the J14 1x finishing half a minute ahead of second in 20:49, and rowing through all of his competitors after starting at the back of the field! There was one more victory for Inverness, which came in the third division for which the sun obligingly shone: Steven Andrews narrowly pipped a SPRC sculler, by 2 seconds in a time of 18:56, to win the R2 1x after a tough battle all the way down the course. Inverness also picked up second places in the mixed masters 2x and the women’s novice 4x+.
The fastest time of the weekend for the open crews went to GUBC in the R1 4- with a time of 15:14 and for the women’s crews EUBC went fastest with a time of 16:58 in the women’s 4-. Interesting to see sweep rowing ruling the roost. The overall winners were George Watsons College based on a metric of participation plus average crew performance.
As always the best performers were really those that do all the hard work to make our Head weekends run so amazingly, from the marshals that spend most of their weekend up at the lock juggling boats, to those that spend weeks beforehand taking entries and organising numbers.