In this Issue ...

Catz Novice Women experiencing a 'Christ Church' moment. Still managed to win, though.

The Rowing Society has been asked to name one of the new eights and it has been suggested that the right to choose the name should be given to the highest bidder. The proceeds of the auction will go to the Anniversary Fund which the Society set up to provide two rooms for the Boat Club Captains (already achieved) and a Foundation Scholarship which is halfway towards its target of £ 25 000.

The rules of the auction will be as follows:

1. The final decision shall rest with the Rowing Society Committee.
2. The right to put forward a name for the eight will go to the one whose bid is deemed to be highest.
3. Bids shall be made in writing or by email to the President: Bruce Mitchell, The Hoo Farm, Tewkesbury, Glos. GL20 7DD, or by email to "hoofarm at ukonline.co.uk" (replace " at " with @)
5. The amount of the highest valid bid received to date (until the day before the closing date) will be displayed on the Rowing Society Web site, or can be obtained by phoning Bruce Mitchell (+44 (0)1684 292185)
6. The closing date for all bids shall be noon on Sunday, 8th January 2006.
7. All proceeds from the 'auction' shall go to the Anniversary Fund to establish a Rowing Society Foundation Scholarship.

Christ Church Regatta (23rd-26th Nov)
Round 1	Women's A	bt	St Anne's D
	Men's A	bt	Jesus C
	Men's B	bt	Wadham B
	Men's C	bt	Corpus B
Round 2	Women's A	bt	Balliol C
	St Antony's A	bt	Men's C
Round 3	Hertford A	bt	Women's A
	Men's A	bt	Worcester A
	Hertford C	bt	Men's B
Round 4	Exeter A	bt	Men's A

Amy Banham-Hall, Women's Captain

The big focus of this term has, of course, been Christ Church Regatta and our novice programme. The girls' crew stood out for their hard work and enthusiasm, reflected by their Christ Church results where they had a good draw and won their first two races easily. Their third race showed their best performance yet, though they were narrowly beaten by Hertford A. Nearly all of the crew are keen to carry on for Torpids.

Despite having lost a chunk of our senior team to finals this year, our remaining senior girls have shown impressive dedication in both land and water training. The newly established 'Erg Club' has seen regular attendance from many of us, with frequent Personal Best performances in the Monday night torture sessions!

Four of our top rowers and our cox teamed up with girls from Merton and Pembroke to compete in Wallingford Head at the end of term, where we performed extremely well, despite having to stop several times for boats we'd caught up in front.

Peter Goult, Men's Captain

After a large and highly successful recruitment drive from the Committee, we established a novice programme while maintaining senior training throughout the term. We put a fairly even spread of undergraduate rowers in our Novice A and B boats, and thanks to an awesome recruitment effort by our MCR President, Mathias Rufino, we were able to arrange a C boat entirely of MCR boys (and occasionally girls too).

In addition to our Pirates and Fairies crew dates with St Hilda's Women's BC and many others besides, in 6th week we had a 'night in' with our five OUBC Triallists who were good enough to come and talk our novices through this years boat race and impart the benefits of their experience.

In Christ Church Regatta all 3 men's crews won their first race on Wednesday. Unfortunately Thursday and Friday's racing was cancelled due to the weather and the regatta resumed on Saturday using a shortened course from OUBC to the Head of the River. Despite an admirable performance from both the B and MCR crews they were eliminated, though I am pleased to say they had an enjoyable term's rowing, achieved a lot and we have built some excellent rowing potential for Torpids out of them. However, Darren Chadwick's coaching efforts with the Men's A boat certainly paid off and they were unfortunate to lose by a canvas to Exeter A, the crew which went on to win the whole event.

On an aside, eight members of St Catz went to the British Indoor Rowing Champs in Birmingham National Indoor Arena. Kevin Skinner, our beloved RS Chairman, cast down the gauntlet with a respectable 6.50s time. OUBC triallists apart, Australian MCR import James Hutton managed to do us proud with a 6.26 minute time, despite heavy drinking, partying and rough and tumble on every crew date, as well as Steve Wicks who pulled a decent 6.40 time and achieved a new personal best. I pulled a diabolical time myself, but excuse myself with having eaten too many Mars bars while sitting writing emails to disorganised rowers.

After Christ Church, there was one final challenge: Wallingford Head. Catz entered one men's VIII, which trained in our new and rather sexy Sims boats (bringing our complement of VIIIs up to seven). Despite only training during Eighth Week, and having four novices in the boat, they put in an excellent performance coming second in the Novice competition by only 10 seconds over 5km. All who took part are to be congratulated on a splendid effort.

It has been a tough but successful term, with many ups and downs. Having a boathouse and boats makes my and Amy's lives a whole lot less stressful. A huge amount of effort went into sorting this out and I would particularly like to thank James Bennett for his stalwart performance throughout, and all those people who have helped and advised me over the summer. The boathouse is now fully refurbed and, with new furniture and heaters, is more sociable than ever. We have new equipment and a huge men's squad to use to produce two killer boats for Torpids, and at least a third of an excellent standard. We also have the largest coxing pool for recent years, thanks to Fleur-Estelle Shaw, our Captain of Coxes.

Though the shape of boats and the attire of the oarsmen has changed somewhat I doubt if an oarsman in 1950 would have seen a great deal of difference in the River than his counterpart in 1900.

Most Colleges still rowed from Barges moored alongside Christ Church Meadow though by 1948 a small number of College has built boathouses upstream of the junction of the Isis and Cherwell, but most of us were still based on the old Barges.

Though they all appeared to be different, this was because of their styling and decor (they were painted in the College colours) and they all basically followed the same pattern. Each barge was attached by heavy metal rings to great wooden piles driven into the river bed. This allowed them to rise and fall with the river level. Access to each barge was along a gang plank from the path at the edge of the meadow. This gangplank led onto an open foredeck, which in turn gave access to the main entrance. Also from the foredeck was a staircase (sometimes two) leading to the roof of the barge which, surrounded by railings, provided a large socialising area and an excellent viewpoint of the river during Torpids, Eights and so forth.

The last St Catherine's Barge.

The rooms, usually two, on the barges occupied the full width of the boat and occupied the full length of the structure beyond the foredeck. The first room was a large saloon used for meetings and socialising. Beyond this was a second, similar sized room, which was used for changing and the racking of oars.

Facilities were primitive. Heat was usually from a stove in the saloon, which backed onto the changing room. Washing was in water pumped from the river and the toilet facilities amounted to little more than a funnel which deposited the waste into the river.

I understand that at one time the barges were moved to indicate the position of the Colleges at the end of Eights but by my time the majority were in too fragile a state to risk moving them. On the Cats Barge many of the bottom timbers resembled sponges and one of the regular jobs on arrival was to pump out the bilge. Each barge had a landing raft attached to the river side, where eights and other craft could be pulled in. Between the barges and the bank most Colleges had a fixed tub for static coaching. This was a rectangular box, fitted with two stretchers and two sliding seats and a pair of outriggers. The occupant, he could row either side, used a standard oar that had had slots cut into the blade so that water passed through the oar rather than the oar moving the boat.

Though the Barges were very attractive and romantic they were very inconvenient as the boats had to be kept elsewhere. Many Colleges had racks in the OUBC Boathouse; others kept their boats at Timms, a boathouse on the site of the present College facility, while the rest of us racked our boats at Salter's Yard, access to which was from just north of Folly Bridge. Often during training we had to queue up to land at the end of the afternoon. Those of us who boated from Salter's simply carried our oars along Christ Church Meadow, but those using Timms or the OUBC had to cross to the towpath using a ferry punt. These were wide open-ended punts which would carry up to a dozen people with ease. Colleges lucky enough to have a waterman could call on him to ferry them while the rest of us relied on friends to carry us across. We were fortunate and didn't need our punt very often. During Eights, etc, we employed a part-time waterman to operate the punt for us.

By the 1960's most of the Barges had either sunk or been scrapped as repairs would have been prohibitive. Those who saw the TV programme where the Water Music was played on a Barge will get an idea of what the boats looked like. The Barge employed was originally the Balliol barge, later used by Cats.

In the summer of 1990, the Boat Club secured its first sponsorship deal, with Coopers & Lybrand Deloitte [which evolved, via just 'Coopers & Lybrand', into 'PricewaterhouseCoopers', our present sponsors], largely thanks to Richard Peters, the RS Chairman at the time. This rapidly bore fruit with the purchase of a coxed four, The Floating Bear, which is still in use.

It was also back in the heady days before global warming was invented - training in Hilary Term 1991 was severely curtailed with river closures due to ice. With just 3 crews more-or-less holding their positions, St Catz had a fairly quiet Torpids with the men's 1st Torpid dropping 1 place to 9th on the river while the women rose 1 place to 3rd.

There were 3 Catz men in that year's Boat Race crew: the cox, Neil Chugani; the stroke and President, Rupert Obholzer; and no.6, a certain Matthew Pinsent. Despite trailing for a significant part of the race, Oxford went on to win by 4 lengths. In the following newsletter I questioned the claim that they had actually been in control throughout, which elicited a letter signed by two of the crew assuring me that that was indeed the case. Or words to that effect, anyway.

OUBC Triallists

Our five triallists were distributed among the top three OUBC boats in the Fours Head (Colin Smith winning the Elite 4- class in in Isis I) and were all still going strong by the time of the OUBC Trials Race on 13th December, which meant that Catz men filled 5 of the 18 seats available (beating last year's record of 4), including both stroke seats. In an exciting race, Slash, stroked by Colin Smith with Bruce Magee at no.6, took an early lead but Burn, coxed by Nick Brodie, stroked by Bastien Ripoll and with Stephan Moelvig at no.2, managed to pull back level by Chiswick Eyot and finally broke clear after Barnes Bridge to win by just over a length of clear water.

In the next newsletter there will reports on training for Torpids and of the progress of our OUBC Triallists, the results of the Boat Name auction and a look at the Boat Club of 25 years ago when, erm, I was men's Captain (seems longer!) and Sharon Macdonald then Cathy Panter-Brick were women's captains. If you rowed that year, you are particularly invited to contribute something for the 'News from Alumni' section.

1-4 Mar 2006	Torpids
4 Mar 2006	RS AGM & Dinner
1 Apr 2006	Henley Boat Races
2 Apr 2006	The Boat Race
24-27 May 2006	Eights