by Jen Wilson
A crew from North Berwick Rowing Club travelled to Cork in Ireland for the Ocean to City – An Rás Mór on the 8th of June. The race, a 28km course, started in the choppy waters of Crosshaven and took the competitors through a series of gates in Cork harbour and then finally into the city centre. The boats competing included everything from traditional wooden working boats, currachs, skiffs, gigs and longboats to contemporary ocean racing shells, kayaks, canoes and even stand-up paddle boards. Our crew called ourselves the New Romantics and consisted of Jen Wilson, Ann Hume, Amanda Mustard, Bjorn Hulman and Robbie Wightman.
We towed St Baldred to Stranraer, took the ferry to Belfast and then drove the four and a half hours to Cork on the Thursday before the race. We managed to get some sightseeing in Cork city on Friday morning before heading to Crosshaven for a practice row, to get our registration pack and to get the boat tied up, numbered and ready for Saturday’s big race.
We had a reasonably early start to get ourselves into Cork for the crew bus to Crosshaven It was lovely to meet with crews from other clubs and we checked out the competition (and the coffee and pastries) beforehand.
Following a safety briefing and a run through of the course and starting times, we were ready to go with Ann coxing us out of the start.
The conditions were sunny with a strong headwind for much of the course. We were up against eight other St Ayles skiffs from Portaferry, Killyleagh, Sketrick, Ardglass, Strangford and Dundrum rowing clubs. The start was slightly chaotic as some skiffs mistakenly tried to start at the same time as another class of boat. This meant that a few skiffs had to stop and do an about-turn to get back on the line. Ann kept calm and got us into a great starting position. We had a strong start, powering off the line with only the Dundrum mens crew ahead of us. We were overtaken by the Killyleagh mens crew but held our position from that point on and made good distance from the other skiffs once we rounded the first gate despite this section being one of the more challenging parts of the course.
After a long let of tough, choppy waters, we made it to the second gate, a lighthouse on stilts near the beautiful town of Cobh, and once safe to do so, Ann and Jen swapped positions while Bjorn and Robbie continued rowing. We were glad we had taken the time to practice these transitions, it turns out that hurdling an oar in a moving boat is quite tricky! We passed through a further two gates, passed the start line of the shorter kayak course and navigated past the passenger ferry. At this stage we were overtaking Currachs whilst being overtaken ourselves by some of the larger crewed boats from other classes.
Jen and Amanda swapped seats for the last section of the route. We were hopeful that the headwinds would have calmed down by this stage of the course but we were hit by gusts of wind as we rounded each bend, making that final push a bit harder!
Coming into the city section of the course, we were greeted by spectators on the shore and the noise of a drumming group as we approached the line which was great. We almost had a clash of oars with another boat who was being coxed riskily close to us but Ann made sure the cox was aware to keep clear with a good Scottish yell which I won’t repeat here!
We got over the line which was a huge relief, tired bodies all round! We got our skiff tied up and wobbled up the jetty on jelly legs to grab a well-earned drink and our finishers medal.
Most of the crew made it to the awards ceremony which was hosted by Ann’s new best friend, the Lord Mayor of Cork.
Robbie kindly took the very short straw and waited for St Baldred to be lifted via crane out of the river and onto our trailer and he drove it back to our accommodation before joining us at the prizegiving. They were only awarding some prizes at the ceremony so it was a lovely surprise when we won both first veteran St Ayles Skiff as well as the first mixed crew of the whole race over the line and were presented with a cup and a trophy! Such a surprise in fact that Jen and Bjorn were at the bar!
It was a brilliant weekend and a well run event, definitely one we would consider doing again.
