Up Where We Belong

Big news first. Carmel is a silver medallist - the Womens Eight won their division Final on Thursday - but the Regatta was interrupted by a severe thunderstorm in the morning that caused widespread panic with dozens of boats on the water and lots of lightning - a dangerous combination. It was fairly sudden , and was followed by torrential rain ; but it also wiped out the internet connections at Chivasso until today. In the end the final was the last race of the day and was held in twilight ; heavy rain then interrupted the medal ceremony so that wasn't held until 7.00 pm last night - so we have had some fairly long days after early starts. The Regatta organisation has been terrible - long delays, late starts every day, wrong allocation of lanes, forgotten race registrations ; it has been quite frustrating at times, and uncomfortable when boats are waiting at the starting area for sometimes up to 90 minutes in 36 degree heat ( once the thunderstorm had cleared the air). But I can report that the Eight came second in  their 1000m race to the USA by just two and a half seconds, after rowing their heat only 20 minutes before. All the team is so proud of them. Bunbury rowers made further finals, but at time of writing no medals : we left the lake early today to get the cars back to the airport. Today was a day for mixed crew races ( men and women together) . Originally Carmel wasn't down to row today but she was asked to fill in on two teams where a vacancy had come up, so she got some more time out on the course without making any finals.
Tonight we have a team dinner in the hotel restaurant, then 9.00 am tomorrow morning a bus will pick 11 of us up for a trip to Mantova where we begin our bike and barge trip. Hopefully I will have some further internet access to keep you posted.