[CUCBC Captains] Theft warning and reminder of rules

[Wilfried Genest]

Dear all,

Lent term is starting soon, may I thus bring your attention to the 
following points:

1) Earlier today money and phones were stolen from a College boathouse 
by people who walked in while a crew was out training. May I remind 
everyone to be careful of theft and to ensure boathouses are locked 
unless someone is inside.

2) Slow warm-ups
Some crews regularly do slow warm up exercises on the paddle downstream 
from the boathouses. This causes queues of traffic behind a boat doing 
arms only exercises.

This is a plea to all coaches and coxes. Please avoid slow warm ups and 
keep your crew rowing at the very very minimum half crew-half slide. If 
you need to do slow exercises please save these for along the Reach 
where there is more room for other crews to overtake safely.

Please be considerate of every other crew on the river when making your 
training plans. Marshals will be noting anyone holding up other crews 
unnecessarily.

3) Navigation
Please make sure that your novice coxes are fully aware of the 
navigation rules (i.e. stay on the right except at the crossover points 
etc).

Please act responsibly and safely and STOP before steering errors become 
a potential collision. Coaches in particular, please keep a close eye on 
your novice coxes and help them out if necessary. It takes a lot longer 
to disentangle 2 crashed boats than it does to stop rowing, re-position 
and restart.

Also please be considerate of other river users in particular moored 
residential boats. If you end up rowing into the side of a boat please 
keep blades off their hull by pulling them in and use the fenders to 
push off so you do not damage their hull or paintwork. Also please 
apologise! If you hit a residential boat in the morning you have most 
likely woken someone up.

4) Spinning
Please keep all spinning to the set spinning areas (i.e. Jesus and 
Baitsbite locks plus Chesterton and the bottom of the reach). Make sure 
you do not spin in front on oncoming crews and please spin quickly and 
get out of the way once you are round. Sitting in the spinning area just 
leaves everyone getting fed up and cold!

5) Early morning noise
Our final reminder is to keep quiet in the early mornings. This doesn't 
just include coaching from the bank before 7:30am but also includes 
keeping your whole crew quiet while they are getting ready and warming 
up and keeping the cox box volume low.

Best regards and happy new year,
    Wilf. Genest
    CUCBC Hon. Sec.