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• Neil Wallace

Last weekend saw the weather settle and nearly 650 boats ready to race which can only mean one thing – it was time for the Inverness Fours and Small Boats Head. While what seemed like the rest of the UK was being battered by wind and torrential rain the waters of the Caledonian Canal remained placid, each morning reflecting back a perfect image of the autumnal trees that line its banks, that is until the first lucky boats made their way up to the start of the head course, cutting the water and spreading rows of ripples in their wake. Is it always like this? Well, best just to say we have been lucky with the weather for the head race weekends for some time now.



So, on to the racing. For inverness we had entries in almost all boat classes – must get a coxless four entered to make the full set next time. And we had success with our novice coxed quad, mixed masters quad and womens r1 pair all picking up medals. Really great to see some of the newer members to the club earning medals, along with those more experienced campaigners. Almost more encouraging was the number of Inverness crews which had been making such an effort to get out training. Now its time to push on and buld on teh settled crews that have formed in preparation for our winter head, and other fun racing excursions to come.

As always the universities and schools had significant contingents racing and it was an EUBC/St Andrew BC mens quad (Patton) that made it down the course in the fastest time of the weekend clocking 14 minutes 40.76 seconds. The fastest women’s boat was a EUBC quad (Jonsson) that raced down the course in 16 minutes 8.15 seconds.

Of course, as always, a huge thanks to all of those that made the weekends racing happen. It is always quite an amazing achievment and should never be taken for granted just how much work goes in to making it run, particularly with ever expanding entries.