Appropriate Boats (2)

This is the sort of crappy picture you get when you grab the camera and fire a few shots off at random as you mill about on the start line of a race but it captures the start of a mini-disaster caused by choosing the wrong boat for the occasion.
The occasion was yesterday's Round Osea Island row, a six mile hack up the lovely River Blackwater in Essex. Osea Island is a private retreat that you can only row round at high tide - the rest of the time it is blocked by a causeway (local estate agents get this the wrong way round - they selfishly believe that the causeway is blocked at high tide).
Langstone Cutters took our Clayton skiff Gladys, a brute of a boat but bulletproof and capable of taking almost any sea. It was a great row, with skies that started a bit overcast (the pictures exaggerate the overcastness because I had to use Picasa's 'I'm feeling lucky' feature which doesn't handle water very well) but brightened up considerably as the afternoon wore on. There was a stiffish northerly wind though, which brought up a bit of a chop.
You will have seen which way this is going. Spotted that coxless quintuple sculling boat? She started off badly when she was cut up ruthlessly at the first buoy by some boat or other <innocent face> and immediately they turned abeam of the wind the crew was bailing hard. They were seen sinking half way round and had to put in at a neighbouring yacht club.-