Isle of Scillies WPGC 2023
On the 26th April 2023, 20 NGRC members and 3 supporters set off for the World Pilot Gig Championships in 2 minibuses and a car. We travelled down to Penzance overnight and caught a ferry to St Marys early Thursday morning. When we arrived at St Marys we were greeted with torrential rain (no exaggeration here!). A short ferry trip to Bryher and we got to our campsite albeit a little soggy.
Friday was Supervets Racing, weather was dry but misty. The first race saw us off to a bad start, with our race start not working at all so we abandoned that for our second race and saw us move from second to last place to position 48 of 51, with some great video footage from Andy of us overtaking one boat.
Saturday was the turn of the Mens Open and Ladies Open races, after the 3rd Supervets was abandoned due to a thick fog keep coming in. The men also suffered from a bad start in their first race similar to the Supervets and the ladies decided not to do their race start based on what had gone before. Illness struck one of our men with strict doctors instructions not to row and Mike from Lewes Gig Club stepped in to fill his seat.
Sunday was day 2 for the Men and Ladies Open and again the fog caused issues with the races seeing one of the mens races cancelled. Mark from Affinity Rowing Club joined our Mens crew and they smashed their race moving from last position to 120thout of 123. Not a dry eye in the house when the boat came in to pick Philip up to join in the rafting up celebrations.
Our ladies fought hard and despite coming in last were overjoyed with their wooden spoons and watching them running down the road waving their arms in the air to collect their spoons was a moment of sheer joy and pride for us all.
The long weekend trip was without a doubt an amazing experience for every single person there and the camaraderie and support for all of our crews made Newhaven Gig Rowing Club the absolute best club to be part of. Good emotions ran high all weekend with happy tears flowing from pretty much everyone. We are hugely grateful to the drivers, the coxes and those that organised the trip, memories were created that we will all treasure forever and we all have some form of clothes item to prove it!