North Berwick Rowing Club

What a great weekend of head to head rowing we had a Port Seton & Cockenzie at the weekend. Everybody turned up with waterproofs and hats and gloves remembering the weather we got last year, but at the end of a day of perfect conditions with blue skies and bright sun there were a few red heads. Sunday, not so warm...but still fun!

NBRC was well represented, competing in all categories sometimes with two crews. We had new rowers competing in their first regatta and some hoping to regain the titles they won last year.

The format was knockout type competition with two boats going head to head in a pursuit style race of ~2 mins. It was a real test of coxing to get round two bouy turns efficiently and a test of the rowers' ability to quickly accelerate the boats to top speed both at the start and after each turn. As with all rowing, it's the teamwork that brings the best results.

The home teams' practice paid off and they got to every final (there were five clubs attending) but we nicked a couple from them. The finals were contested by

Over two days of racing NBRC set the fastest times, our Men's Open crew had the best time of 2min 6 secs, closely followed by our Mixed Open crew at 2min 9secs, which bodes well for the forthcoming season.

Thanks to the BoatieBlest club of Port Seton & Cockenzie for hosting a wonderfully unique event and providing some smashing cakes :-)

The local Rugby Club retained NBRC’s Trades Cup on a fantastic evening of rowing off North Berwick Harbour last night.  The Trades cup is a community competition open to any local organisation, trade or group, with the crews made up of complete beginners to rowing, but with an experienced coxswain/ coach provided from the rowing club.

The Oval Ball players had seen off a team of Firefighters on their way to the final.  They faced a team of Homeworkers in the final, with a handicap system giving the homeworkers a 12 seconds start..  by a coincidence the exact difference between the times the two teams had registered in their heats.

Before that, in the Little Final, the Firefighters overcame a team of  Skateboarders from local community project "theSpace", with the Space men using the event to raise funds and warm up for a 10,000 km charity trip to Mongolia.

In the Final the Rugby players were down going into the turn, but managed to pull away from it half a length up, a lead which they extended as they headed for the finish.

Lots of photos available here, thanks to Frazer MacDonald Hay

Full report here.

Video below (or click here)