2012 World Pilot Gig Championship

Callington students take part in world famous championships

An account of the weekend's events, by Sam Rogers, Year 12

The rowers for our Men's B crew are Dan Crowle, Alasdair Gascoyne, Ben Tamblyn, Callum MacKellar and myself, rowing in the gig 'Zeus'.

We have only now been rowing together for one year and are all either 16 and 17 and in some cases the event was some of our crew's first experience of racing.

There are also several other older members of our crew Mark, Tony, John, Dave and our Cox, Gill.

The weekends events for our crew were as follows:

Friday, our crew arrived on the island by plane or boat and stayed over night around the island of St Mary's.

Saturday, after a small warm up the racing began with conditions overcast and the sea choppy with a powerful swell (a problem for our club as we mostly train on the calmer river).

The first race is the long race from St Agnes to St Mary's a distance of 1.59 nautical miles (1.83 miles), this race involves all men's crews under the age of 50, a total of 125 gig's all rowing at the same time.

Dependent on your position in the long race your crew would be allocated to a certain group with 12 other boats similar to your own capability, for the next three heat events.
Our crew achieved 80th out of the 125 boats placing us in group G.

The next three races are the short races across the bay from Nut Rock to St Mary's a distance of 1.16 nautical miles (1.33).

The system used in these stages states the in each race the boats placed 1st and 2nd are moved up into the higher set, alternately in you are place in the bottom two you are moved to the lower set.
Unfortunately the the following heat didn't go as well for us with our crew finishing 11th out of 12, by a narrow margin, meaning that we were relegated to group H.

Excuses vary but it must be said that our start was poor and the choppy seas made it difficult for our inexperienced crew.

On Sunday our second day of racing began with the 2nd heat race, by which point weather conditions had improved vastly with the sea as flat as a mill pond and the sky's as clear, our river crew now had an advantage.

In this race we improved dramatically as we spent most of the race in 1st position, however we were disappointed when we crashed into by another boat that brought us the offending gig and another boat all to a stand-still.

Our final position after we recovered was 5th keeping us in group H, rather than the promotion we'd hoped for.

Later that day we had the final race of the championships, an all out sprint on the short course against the other gig's in our group. After a rushed start we cruised into the lead and remained there for much of the race, however as we tired another boat 'Speedwell' crept into view and managed to pip us at the post by less than half a boats length.  Although we didn't get the podium finished for that group we were very pleased with our achievements as the youngest crew at the whole event.

Overall after all the heats our final position was 86th out of the 125 gigs rowing in the men's competition.  The winner of the both the Men's and Ladies competitions and overall world champions was Falmouth rowing in 'Black Rock'.

We all had an amazing time in the Scillies and are very pleased with all our efforts and are all glad that our training has paid off.  We hope to return next year with an even better crew comprised solely of under 20 year old's and will be aiming for much greater things, combined with lots of training and the guidance of our brilliant Cox we believe we can achieve our goals.