Frustration for Bexhill at championships

One of the Bexhill Rowing Club crews tackles the rough conditions at the South Coast Championships in Deal

The prestigious season-ending event was abandoned due to rough water with around a third of the programme uncompleted and Bexhill’s results before the action was halted hadn’t quite lived up to their own very high hopes.

Bexhill captain Nick McCorry said: “The conditions made it anyone’s race and it became a bit more of a lottery. If it was a flat sea regatta, we would probably be having a different conversation.”

The South Coast Championships brought together crews from the Coast Amateur Rowing Association (Worthing to Herne Bay) and the Hants and Dorset Amateur Rowing Association (Swanage to Southsea).

Bexhill’s crews had trained hard for the event and were aiming to be the top club having dominated the Coast Amateur Rowing Association league once again this year.

In the races which did take place, Bexhill’s senior men came second despite their boat filling up with water and the vet 40 open crew also finished runners-up. The J16 girls’ quad came third and there was a dead heat in the J14 girls’ quad.

The senior ladies came fourth, as did the junior men having been second at halfway. The novice men would have been confident of victory had their final gone ahead having won their by some five lengths.

“We had 20 entries which was the most out of the CARA clubs,” added McCorry. “We beat our fellow Kent and Sussex clubs, but we didn’t get the final result over the Hampshire and Dorset.

“We’ve had a good year. We’ve won nine championships, the league and the grand aggregate, and the senior men performed better at Henley (Regatta) than they ever had done.”