TIDEWAY `TOO FULL TO TRAIN'.

With the Icicle Head cancelled last weekend, the rain-battered Tideway was full of crews in training for the Eights Head and Boat Race.

Swollen by groundwater, the river became a constant heave of wash built up by the huge number of coaching launches.

The captain of Thames Tradesmen, Fred Badowski, conceding that his own club forms part of the problem, said: "It's getting to the stage where launches are making it impossible for crews to row on good water. All our crews got soaked because there was so much wash."

A voluntary ban on launches at certain periods was tried a few years ago, but failed. It may be time to revive the idea.

A number of stalwart rowers who have endured more than heavy wash met at the Corinthian Sailing Club last Friday at a party thrown by Atlantic oarsmen Duncan Nicoll and Jock Wishart. Although it clearly requires a special type of determination to hazard weeks of battering by storms and sun, ocean rowers come in many types.

Wishart chose Nicoll as his partner after extensively testing several candidates, though the former green beret seems to have got the seat less on account of his impressive musculature than on the psychological exercise carried out by Chris Jones of London RC, which predicted him to be so imperturbable he would resist falling out with the bouncy Scot even under provocation.

Wishart, who had researched boating equipment thoroughly, is full of praise for the hi-tech fittings they'd had installed in their craft, many from local companies. The solar panels installed by Michael Penny and David Colley of Teddington's Penn Maritime proved infallible.

Teddington's Charlie Street, who rowed across with fellow policeman Roger Gould, was motivated by a desire to raise money for a his godson. Sam Deacon died at eight of leukaemia in 1991, but Street still campaigns to add to the million-plus he has raised for research and treatment.

"It wasn't such an advantage to be tall," he says. The hatch to the men's cramped sleeping space leaked from the moment they set off.

Andrew Halsey, who crossed single-handed earlier in 1997, finds crowds more stressful than oceans. Undaunted by the privations of weeks without water, he is keen to take on the Pacific soon.

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