Having moved ourselves over from our old boathouse on Oak Road and settled in properly into East Park, it was decided that we needed to get ourselves back out on the local racing scene.

It had been many years since a community rowing club in Hull had put out many crews ‘in anger’ – in fact Dave (our oracle of knowledge when it comes to rowing in Hull) commented that he hadn’t known many Hull crews racing since the days of Kingston Rowing Club in the 1970s – so we decided that it was time we changed that.

York Small Boats Head was our first target – the standard of sculling had increased since moving to the lake and the old addage of ‘mileage makes champions’ was soon changing to shouts from the lake side of ‘sit up!’ and ‘lengthen your stroke’.

We entered an armada of crews into the event with all three divisions being filled with Hull crews – for most of our juniors, it was their first head race and excitement was high.

Sadly the weather gods intervened and cancelled the original date – thankfully, York City Rowing Club were able to put the event on a fortnight later and with a few changes around, we got crews racing!

Our Club Treasurer Rob braved the single and raced in Novice and IM3 singles, giving him his first race in the 1x in a while and acquitted himself well in both the first and third divisions.

While we had to scratch a couple of our double sculls crews due to the new event date, Max and Oscar carried on in their double sculls. Having sculled together for a while, this was an opportunity for them to race competitively together for the first time.

 

For Max and Oscar it was a good learning curve, giving them some good racing experience and the chance to see what winter racing was all about.

Finally we got the junior girls out racing. Our junior girls group had been growing steadily and it was time for them to get some racing under their belt. The girls quad of Amy, Katy, Bella and Jodie (having only started rowing a few months earlier), coxed by Club Secretary and Coach Charlotte did incredibly well given that they had no time in a quad. Again a steep learning curve but great experience for the girls.

 

Overall a great day out for Hull Kingston Rowing Club with some fantastic experience for all of our scullers. A huge thanks as always to Dave Wilkinson for his support getting people on and off the water and transporting equipment and a huge thanks to York City Rowing Club and Bradford Amateur Rowing Club for the loan of boats to help us race.