Just received this feedback from a Yole owner.
I am a very happy Yole user x3 days a week on average breaking ice last week! On the coast down near Portsmouth. I will buy another boat hopefully next year. Meanwhile happy user.
Steve Woods
There is just enough time to order a TS515 training scull and have it delivered before the VAT goes up to 20%.
On Saturday Sky TV turned up at Liverpool Victoria Rowing Club to record one of the only sporting events that was taking place over the weekend, the Head of the Float. We've had freezing cold weather but not too much snow here and the temperature rose fractionally above freezing so it felt a bit milder as we took to the water at 9.30 in our Masters E quad to race at 10am.
We had a great scull, tarnished only by the wash from boats ahead of us which reflects off the dock walls and sometimes adds to other waves making life uncomfortable and sculling unpredictable.
We'd no sooner put the boat away than we were racing in a Master's C eight. I coxed this time and Jeremy Lush stroked the crew. We started first in our batch so had flat water, which makes a significant difference. Jeremy takes no prisoners and set off at 37 strokes per minute and settled at about 35 leaving all other crews in the distance behind us.
The dock is quite short, as head races go, not much over 1,000m so we turn round and do it again then paddle back to where we boated from at the club.
We'd no sooner finished with the C eight than we were out again, this time as a D eight. Jeremy and I swapped over so this time he coxed and I stroked the crew, which was otherwise unchanged, if a little bit more tired by now.
I managed to get up to 36 at one point but held the rate at about 35 again on both legs. At the end we were all exhausted but reckoned we'd had a good day's training. It is hard to achieve the intensity reached in a race when only training.
Time for the results. These were interesting with all three crews quite close.
The C 8 was 7th, out of the 64 crews that turned up to race, in a time of 7.47. The E quad was 11th overall in 7.58.
The D 8 was 15th overall in 8.02.
What was interesting was that the C and D eights were in the same C/D race and that the handicap advantage of the D crew was exactly the same as the time difference between them! So we were deemed to have dead heated in first place in that event and so all three crews went home with pennants as the E quad won their event by 23 seconds.
We were not the only Grosvenor RC crews to be successful in this friendly Northwest event. Our men's senior squad came 1st, 2nd and 3rd with three different combinations from their 13 athletes. Also the women's W.IM1.8+ raced themselves and managed to beat themselves and lose to themselves. But they also managed to lose to Liverpool Univerity's novice women so well done LUBC! The men's and women's novice crews were not successful however but then it is early days in their development yet.
So it was great day's sport and the drizzle towards the end of the day did not affect morale at all.