We had nine boats compete in the 2014 Mettam headrace which is actually a fair fleet, although we felt pretty outnumbered by the heaving hoards of UWA athletes parked beside us at the traditional Deep Water Point launch point on the Canning River.
This is how we fared overall, picking up 38 points for our efforts which has still got us clear of ANA but behind the SRRC and UWABC powerhouses.
And here's all the results, as sorted and explained in a long Facebook thread by the Michael Jones: Mettam results
That said, before we even got to Canning, there was the Great Negotiation of Barrack Square. Turns out with a fully laden Wesley trailer, we've got about 10cm leeway to get around the corners of the revised Barrack Square layout. This pic has been sent off to the very accommodating Leighton Broad who are the contractors looking after the square, so they know just how close we are to taking out some of their awe-inspiring industrial orange bollard jungle.
Lou-the-driver seemed pretty relaxed about the whole thing, but then he wasn't watching $200K worth of carbon navigate through the veritable labyrinth.
Over at Canning, as always there weren't enough bolts. Sam promises he's buying some more washers in the next round of spare parts and big shout-out to UWA for lending us some spares so the Three Sisters could go complete with backstays.
This is the map we were all attempting to use to navigate. At least this one appears to be oriented north, although it is scaled to miles:
If I have a quiet day in the office, I might have a crack at redoing it. Anyway...
For those competing the two mile event, it was one of the more memorable start sequences of late - it actually took us longer to get in a numerical line of boats in start order than it did to do the race.
This was my take of the start line:
Sadly I didn't get around to turning on the GPS so I can't give you a nice line of where I went.
Another highlight was some good face-to-face rivalry between the UWA D2X- and WARC - the girls came over to chest-bump Pam in some sort of attempt at intimidation, but were then duly flogged by the girls in red. Well played.
Over in the novice boat, Shaun "Brady's ladies" Brady was in the cox seat of the Francis. Being about twice the size of each athlete in the boat, it's a good thing our hero has a teflon-coated ego. The last heckle heard from an umpire as Shaun steered the Pickle-winning quad through the Mt Henry Bridge sounded an awful lot like:
"Good thing you're making up for your weight with that line."
And that was one of the more savoury of the comments aimed at Shaun's robust stature during the day.
For debut athlete Satori, she reported Shaun kept the crew in good spirits but even his in-suppressible positivism could not take the pain of the final 500m away, and it was a tough battle into a rotten stiff wind to get across the line.
Nick and Sam belted the men's double scull to an easy win, backing up an appropriate amount of banter on the start line.
And for Janelle Austin, we have a sneaking suspicion she may have set something close to a Mettam W1X- record, however as the historical results of the race are no longer accessible, this isn't something we can substantiate. Her time would have got her third in the women's double, and second in the men's single.
At unloading, there was a Dalek. This isn't something we can explain, but here's the proof:
