Wednesday 28 March 2007

It had to be you.......

Martin as you know is our Coxswain. Rob is our principle Second Coxswain, Martin's right hand man if you like. In their absence it falls to Dave (Mechanic)and I to take the boat to sea. On Monday night Martin was out walking his dogs and Rob was out of town so Dave acted as Coxswain and I as his second Cox.

The majority of the responsibility is fairly easy to deal with. However, without doubt, the hardest part is picking which crew are going to fill the vacant spaces on the boat. On Monday night with Martin and Rob away we had 3 gaps and Dave (he was pretending to be busy with the engines) asked me to pick from the assembled crew at the bottom of the stairs. Now I made the fatal error of looking at them.........8 pairs of puppy dog eyes staring up at me, each set pleading 'pick me, pick me'! In a flash I realised that this is an almost impossible decision to make. In the end I made the choice of a mix of experience (Ron) and youth (Matt). The others unfortunately had to be content to work on the slipway and do whatever needed doing in the boathouse. Thankless but necessary.

Of our casualty nothing has yet been heard. No reports have come back to us of her being found but equally no reports have been received of any missing persons. Our thoughts remain with her and we pray that this will have a happy outcome.

It had to be you
It had to be you
I wandered around and finally found
The somebody who

(Gus Kahn and Isham Jones)

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