Highlight: 300 Entries for the 19th Quintin Head

Crew Photos

The newly branded Vets Head followed metaphorically in the wake of the Head of the River Race, starting at 2:00 pm on Sunday. The weather was overcast but dry with a gentle to moderate SW wind blowing and rowing conditions were quite acceptable. There were 224 entries, including 151 eights and 73 coxless quad sculls. 215 crews completed the course.

Quintin fielded two crews - a Masters F eight (average age 60-64) and a Masters H eight (average age 70-74). The F eight, starting at No. 128 finished 145th in a time of 21 min. 37.37 sec. The H eight, starting at No. 142 were in a G/H handicap division and so were hoping to exploit their age advantage over the 'G' opposition. In the end they beat all of the G/H opposition on raw time except for the Broxbourne 'G' crew (12 seconds faster) and the Bedford/Star 'G' crew (4 seconds faster). As the handicap between 'G' and 'H' was calculated at 34 seconds, Quintin won the G/H pennant with a comfortable margin.

Details of the winning crew may be found on our regatta wins page.

The full results may be found at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MmbO7KjjRigaLzSVM5ZOAyUbH05uAjWu5-dm3k0ptZ4/edit#gid=0.

Photographs of the event may be found at http://quintinboatclub.org/gallery/index.php?ref=3303.

Crew Photos

"Head" day started drearily with persistent rain until mid-morning when, much to the relief of competing crews, things started to brighten up. By the afternoon the sun was shining, giving a spring-like feel to the atmosphere, ready for the race to begin at 1:00 pm. As expected, Oxford Brookes University dominated proceedings with five of their crews taking the top eleven places, six in the top twenty and their eighth crew finishing 31st. Leander just missed winning the race by 1.9 seconds to finish second and their second crew pushed Thames A into sixth place where they retained the Vernon Trophy.

Quintin fielded two crews, very much at the development stage. The B crew went first, at start No. 108, and fished 146th in 19 min.15.6 sec. The A crew started at No. 116 and finished 110th in 18 min. 56.8 sec. Well done to the captain for getting both crews afloat!

A summary of the club's results may be found on our Head of the River web page and full results are available at https://www.horr.co.uk/result/.

Photographs of the event may be found at http://quintinboatclub.org/gallery/index.php?ref=3300.

Prizegiving Photos

The prizegiving for the 2023 Quintin Head was held at the boathouse on Thursday, 23rd February. The prizes were presented by Bill Weston, chair of the trustees of the Quintin Hogg Trust. Medals for category winners were awarded to those able to atttend. The boys victor ludorum prize of a CoxBox was collected by representatives of King's College School, Wimbledon while the girls victor ludorum prize (also a CoxBox) was collected by their WJ15 and WJ16 crews, who had also won medals in their respective categories.

The host club was represented by most of the winning Open Masters G crew and their efforts have swelled the ranks of this year's Pennant Winners Chart.

The race results may be found at ../quintinhead/results.php?date=2023-01-29.

Photographs of the event may be found at http://quintinboatclub.org/gallery/index.php?ref=3282.

Annual Dinner Photos (2)

The club's annual dinner was held at the Royal Mid-Surrey Golf Club on Friday 10th February. The guest speaker was three times Olympic rowing gold medal winner Andrew Triggs Hodge who has since rowed roung the island of Great Britain and is now involved in London Youth Rowing. The event was well attended by members past and present and their guests. The now-traditional game of "heads or tails" was won this year by Andrew Bramah.

Photographs of the event may be found at http://quintinboatclub.org/gallery/index.php?ref=3279.

Race Day Photos

The 19th Quintin Head took place on Sunday with an overcast sky and the air comparatively balmy after the recent sub-zero temperatures, although most crews had the sense to wrap up well. This year the number of entries was increased from 250 to 300 and even with a few withdrawals before the draw took place 300 names went into the hat.

The race started pretty promptly just after 10:30am, despite the fact that there were 31 latecomers. Thames RC led off the procession and rowed over to retain their start position. Molesey won both the open senior and intermediate 1 categories. Intermediate 2 was won by Notts County and the development category by Imperial College School of Medicine. St Paul's, finishing sixth, were the fastest school crew, but competing in the Championship category. They also won the J15 category. Eton College won both J18 and J16 categories. Leander were the fastest women's crew while the other senior women's categories were shared by City of Bristol (W Senior), Upper Thames (W Inter 1) and City of Cambridge (W Inter 2) with University of Warwick taking the women's development prize. Henley retained the WJ18 top position while Surbiton High School won both WJ16 and WJ15.The masters winners were spread among the usual suspects: Crabtree (Masters B/C) Upper Thames (Masters D and E/F), Quintin (Masters G, by a whisker over Weybridge), Walton (Women's Masters C), Putney Town (Women's Masters D) and Broxbourne (Women's Masters E/F).

Full results are at ../quintinhead/results.php?date=2023-01-29.

The junior victor ludorum prizes, donated by the trustees of the Quintin Hogg Memorial Fund, for the best aggregate results across 18, 16 and 15 year olds were won by King's College School (boys) and Surbiton High School (girls). Each club will receive a CoxBox Core.

In the end 281 crews started and completed the course. As is expected at this time of the year there a number of scratchings, either due to illness or due to the lack of practice on swollen rivers in the lead-up to the race. For those of you who, like football pundits, revel in statistics, the race was administered and marshalled by some 206 volunteers, including umpires, marshals, timing teams and safety boat crew. There were six safety vessels along the course and 29 marshals' and umpires' boats used in all.

New this year was the ability to watch the results of the primary timing system coming in during the race on the internet, courtesy of the Alge timing system. Thanks go to the volunteers from King's College, London who helped to man the timing teams, and of course to all the other volunteers without whom the race could not be run on such a scale.

Photographs of the event may be found at http://quintinboatclub.org/gallery/index.php?ref=3264.

The annual plum puddings event was held today in wintry conditions over the normal downstream course from the Pink House to the club. Thirteen crews took part, including six eights, five quad sculls, a coxless four and a coxed octuple scull, fielded from four different clubs. According to current practice the crews were started in expected order of speed, with the fastest going off first, but a sealed handicap was applied to determine who should win the prizes. Prizes were awarded to first and second in the eights and octuples and to first and second in the quads and fours. The Quintin women's novice octuple took first prize in the eights and octuples, with Sons of the Thames mixed veteran eight taking second place. In the fours and quads MAABC's men's veteran G quad came first, with their men's veteran E quad second.

The full results may be downloaded from ../news/2022_plum_pudding_results.pdf.

After the racing was over, the boats washed down and stowed away, and hot showers taken by the competitors, a large number congregated in the club room to distribute the prizes, take on some festive spirit, warm up with chilli con carne supplied by Nick Ryan and co. and to take the opportunity of purchasing the inevitable raffle tickets. A good time was had by all.

Mark Chatwin and Charles Harrison were competing in single sculls at the Walton Small Boats Head on Saturday. Mark came second in the Masters C division in a time of 12 min. 7.3 sec, while Charles came second in Masters G in a time of 13 min. 27.6 sec.

The full results may be downloaded from http://www.waltonrowingclub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/WSBH-2022-ALL-DIVISIONS-BY-BOAT-v2.pdf.

Masters F coxless four

The club had two crews competing in the Veteran Fours Head on Sunday and Tom Bishop was also representing the club in a composite crew. Our Masters G quad scull finished second in category in a time of 20 min. 34.0 sec, eight seconds behind Sons of the Thames. Their overall position was 46th. Our Masters F coxless four (barflies) completed the course in 22 min. 47.4 sec, finishing 182nd overall. Tom Bishop's composite Masters H quad scull, with Rod Stewart and Pete Atkinson of Dart Totnes ARC and Lee Brown of MAABC won their category in a time of 20 min. 32.3 sec, 43rd overall.

The full results may be found currently at http://www.vetfourshead.com/results-and-prizes/.

Tom Bishop increases his tally in this year's Pennant Winners Chart.

A photograph of the Masters F coxless four may be found at http://quintinboatclub.org/gallery/index.php?ref=3261.

The club had a quad scull competing in the Fours Head on Saturday. They were placed in the Club quad sculls category and finished eighth out of 15 in the category in a time of 19 min. 23.8 sec.

The full results may be found at https://rowresults.co.uk/4shead22.

The club has a quadruple scull entered for the Fours Head this Saturday. It has a starting position of 100 and is entered in the club event, for which there are sixteen entries.

The full starting order may be found at https://fourshead.org/startorder/.

The club also has two entries and an interest in a third in the Veteran Fours Head on Sunday. Our Masters G quad scull has a start position of 159 and our Masters F coxless four starts at number 177. In addition Tom Bishop is sculling in a composite Masters H quad scull, combining with Dart Totnes and Mortlake Anglian and Alpha. They have a start position of 169.

The full starting order for this race may be found at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rltz9R6zYWEdkKWpzVN2K7u0abCn1-cwOKJUD5DvzF4/edit#gid=2136296556.

We wish all our competitors "Good luck!" and we are sure they would appreciate some vocal support from the river bank during the race. Both races are, of course, over the Championship track from Mortlake to Putney, Saturday's race starting at 12 noon and Sunday's at 1:00pm.

Steve Aquilina repeated his triumph at Kingston Small Boats Head last week with a win this week in Masters F single sculls over the same 5,200m course at the Teddington Head. His time of 22 min. 3.4 sec. was 15 seconds faster than his closest rival in a field of seven Masters F scullers. Charles Harrison was also successful, winning the Masters G/H single sculls pennant in a time of 22 min. 50.1 sec.

The full results may be found at https://walbrookrowing.files.wordpress.com/2022/11/div-1-results.pdf.

Our list of successes in the autumn heads is beginning to grow - take a look at our Head and Regatta Wins for this year.

Steve Aquilina was competing in the Kingston Small Boats Head on Saturday. He completed the 5,200 metre course in 21 min. 9.17 sec. to win the Masters F pennant, a minute and seventeen seconds ahead of his closest rival.

The full results may be found at https://www.rowtimer.com/event/15c2cc.

With this win Steve joins this year's Pennant Winners Chart.

At the beginning of the year Tom Bishop set off with his friend Rod Stewart from Dart Totnes ARC to compete in some masters races "down under", and the rest, as they say, is history, with Tom and Rod returning to the UK with a clutch of medals. Now, not content with their earlier successes, Tom and Rod went west to compete in the Head of the Charles race in Boston, Massachusetts. They completed the course in a time of 19 min 16.438 sec, finishing sixth in the over 60s double sculls division but were the fastest over 70s by over a minute, securing the Veteran medals.

The full results may be found at https://www.regattacentral.com/regatta/results2/eventResults.jsp?job_id=6144&event_id=18.

Whilst they came away with another pair of medals it was not, to use a nautical term, all plain sailing. Tom takes up the story below. One of the photographers recording the race from the bank was a certain Hugh Slee, who was a member of Quintin back in the 1980s and '90s but now lives in Boston. He recognised the Quintin colours and took a great interest as the story unfolded, documenting it photographically. Some of his photographs may be found in our photogallery, where there is also a link to his website.

Head of the Charles Photos

Tom's Story

"We had rented a brand new all carbon latest Hudson, and set it up the previous two days so that we were flying - hoping to see if we could beat the 60 year olds (we are 74 average - it's why we do it).

On the way to the start we hit an underwater tree which knocked the fin out. The boat was unsteerable. However we were just a couple of hundred metres from Harvard men's boathouse. I knew the boat man Charlie Butt from the 70's and quad sculling, so I thought we might get help there. We duly landed and called for the boatman...who didn't appear; but a lady, Sarah Baker, who is the coach of the Harvard women's heavy weight and lightweight squads did come to see what the fuss was about. She tried the Harvard spares for a Hudson fin, but the ones they had were the wrong type and didn’t fit. Time was now getting short till our start time and we were 15 minutes away from the start. Rod had given up by now and accepted that we had blown it, however my mantra is ‘how do we win from here’…. I asked Sarah if there was a boat we could borrow, and she said yes!

It happened that the Harvard women's boathouse at Weld is being refurbished and all the women's boats are at the men's boathouse (the men and women have found that they actually like each other and may switch the women and men to sharing boathouses in the future, lightweights in one and heavies in the other). She and a chum went and got the lightweight women's Fluid out of the boat park. By now we had 12 minutes until our start time. We jumped in and without even time to adjust our feet, set off. At this point we realised that the boat had steering, and we were going in a circle. I said to Rod, "You are steering all over the river". He replied, "I can’t move the steering shoe". You have to imagine we were in a panic as it was. I looked down and realised I had the steering shoe. We managed to laugh at that. So we now rowed at rate 27/28 to the start and got there with 30 seconds to spare, slotting into our place and straight into the race. We didn’t race particularly well as we had been racing for 12 minutes before we started on the course, but it was sufficient as the results showed. It was difficult to get the head back into race mode after the dislocation and we were only at 30 rate when we had hoped to go over at 32 ish.

In addition, on the way to the start, counting down the minutes and trying to steer with a shoe, going into the last (concrete) bridge I misjudged it and we were hard up against the buttress. I shouted at Rod to hold hard but it was too late and I had to let my left scull go or it would have been snapped off at the gate. So now my scull is parallel with the boat and Rod just had time to pull his left blade all the way in to the gate missing the buttress by an inch. How we didn’t roll into the water I don't know, but we got ourselves back together and paddled the few strokes into the starting shute to race. It would have been a disaster to break borrowed blades and borrowed boat.

Sarah Baker is bringing the Harvard ladies over to the UK in June to do Women's Henley and Henley Roya and is looking to do an outing on the Tideway to give her girls that experience. I said to contact us as we should be able to arrange boating from QBC/MAA to return the favour of the boat loan. I think they will be renting a fleet of Hudsons in the UK (they might like Empacher?).

Anyway a lot had to go right in sequence, and amazingly it did. We paddled the Fluid back to the Hudson dock after the finish, and Hudson were already aware and had a fin for us to collect, take to Harvard, repair the Hudson and paddle it back to the Hudson rental dock. After which we went for a few beers!

So snatching victory from the jaws of defeat!"

Tom Bishop

Tom is establishing another early lead in the 2022-23 Pennant Winners Chart.

The Ancient Mariners

The club also had an interest in racing the following day when sometime Quintin member Bruce Lamka was competing in Grand Masters eights with his clubmates from the Ancient Mariners club in Seattle. They were also an over 70s crew and also won the veterans category.

Photographs of the event may be found at http://quintinboatclub.org/gallery/index.php?ref=3250.

Photographs of the event may be found at http://quintinboatclub.org/gallery/index.php?ref=3259.

Three of our masters took part in the Weybridge Silver Sculls on Saturday over the upstream course of approximately 3300m between the Little Weir between Walton and Sunbury and the top of the Desborough Cut. Ken Almand came third out of 14 in the Masters E singles culls event in a time of 15 min. 20 sec, Steve Aquilina came second out of seven in Masters E in a time of 15 min. 54 sec. and Charles Harrison won the Masters G event in a time of 16 min. 25 sec, beating the three other 'G' scullers.

Full results may be found at https://www.weybridgerowing.club/wss-results/2022.

With this win Charles joins Tom Bishop in this year's Pennant Winners Chart.

A report from Adrian Ballardie

A party of the BarFlies group went to the 2022 Rund Um Wannsee race in Berlin held by the Berlin Rowing Club on Sunday 2nd October.

Berlin Photos

Our crew were to have rowed as an eight but David King slipped on a flight of stairs the day before the race and fractured a rib and Roger Griffiths fell foul of a very bad cold. Accordingly, we rowed in a coxed six kindly lent by BRC in lieu of the eight we had hired. Other Quintin members, Simon Wood and Andrew Bramah, rowed with a Downing College Cambridge alumni eight, and yet others, Willy Almand and Tony Zucher, rowed in a Mortlake Anglian and Alpha and Sons of the Thames mixed composite eight.

Results:

Mens 8+ Vet D-H

Downing College 3rd of 4 in a time of 1:04:25
Mortlake Anglian & Alpha Composite crew 4th of 4 in a time of 1:05:15

Mens 6+ Vet "Out of Competition"

Quintin Boat Club Vet E 2nd of 2 in a time of 1:16:21

The crew of our 6 were Sakti Narayan, Mike Harris, Richard Ware, Adrian Ballardie, Mark Russell and David Nicol with a local cox.

Despite being reduced to six, the Quintin Boat Club crew had a most enjoyable row in good conditions with sunshine and a brisk westerly breeze on the lake. The Downing crew inexplicably lost their rudder a few minutes into the race which made their result good given the steering problems that inevitably ensued. The overall winning time by a Berlin crew was 0:52:00 by a M 8+ Vet A crew.

Berlin Rowing Club afforded their best hospitality, staging a buffet meal on the Friday night of our arrival as well as providing a cox and great equipment, all greatly appreciated by our crews.

Photographs of the event may be found at http://quintinboatclub.org/gallery/index.php?ref=3245.

Our winter season kicked off with the Pairs Head this Saturday, where we had an interest in two double sculls: Steve Aquilina and Ian Hyslop entered the Masters G category while Tom Bishop paired up with Rod Stewart of Dart Totnes ARC in Masters H. Steve and Ian finished 123rd overall in a time of 15 min. 7.3 sec, but were the only entry in their category and so were not competing for a pennant. Tom and Rod finished a very creditable 51st overall in a time of 14 min. 27.37 sec, winning the Masters H pennant by just over 80 seconds.

The full results may be downloaded from https://www.bblrc.co.uk/pairshead/.

With this win Tom doubles his tally in the Pennant Winners Chart.

(posted late - 01/11/2022 - owing to editor's holiday interfering with the smooth running of things!)

The club had six scullers competing in this year's Scullers' Head, all racing for pennants in various masters divisions. The club's fastest sculler over the championship course was Ken Almand, finishing second in the Masters E division in a time of 24 min. 2.66 sec. Tom Bishop won the Masters I pennant in a time of 24 min. 33.45 sec, with a winning margin of 71 seconds. Graham Bagnall was third in the same division in 26 min. 36.59 sec. There was an inter-club battle in Masters D between Mark O'Brien and Dov Ohrenstein, sculling in TSS colours, with only seven seconds separating them at the finish. Dov was also just pipped by Tom. Here is a summary of our results:

• Ken Almand (MasE) finished 141st in 24:02.66 - 2nd in category
• Mark O'Brien (MasD) finished 171st in 24:27.01 - 12th in category
• Tom Bishop (MasI) finished 190th in 24:33.45 - 1st in category
• Dov Ohrenstein (TSS) (MasD) finished 191st in 24:34.06 - 13th in category
• Steve Aquilina (MasF) finished 206th in 24:42.19 - 6th in category
• Graham Bagnall (MasI) finished 358th in 26:36.59 - 3rd in category
• James Spicer (MasE) finished 361st in 26:47.25 - 15th in category

The full results may be found at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1trSX1rvVshUrglg-fmkY_LoSPGCy0FFw7zLZ-w2V63E/edit#gid=0.

Once again Tom Bishop kicks off a new season's Pennant Winners Chart.