"Scraping through" is not the most flattering way to describe our performance at the Deep Water Bay Regatta, but it was quite accurate - at least for the early part of the event.

Coming off our fourth place finish over 500m in Lamma and our glorious second place in the 1000m event we headed to Deep Water Bay with a fair amount of LiechtenConfidence (something we're generally not shy of...)

Open Heat 1 at 0820hrs was a good wake up call as we found ourselves alongside Hong Kong Fire Services West, Sha Shing Sports Team and the Royal X Men (A) among a few others. Loaded at 20-paddler capacity (including four mercenaries recruited during the course of the week), we readied our boat in Lane 5 and on the starter's order accelerated towards the beach. As has happened too often, our start felt too sluggish, although the Fast Ten brought us back in the race. Ready And Go and into our chug at 60 strokes per minute. But discipline was lacking and the boat started to accelerate beyond our chose speed limit too early, making a RATING UP NOW at 60 an impossible task. Add to that the fact that at 130 strokes (Lamma race distance) we were still far away from the finish line and a certain level of frustration and tiredness could be felt down the boat.

It was a fourth place and still good enough for a space in the semis without a detour via the repechage. Scrape through number one.

After a leisurely morning it was time to re-focus (pronounced with a heavy French accent) and fine-tune our strategy for the semis. We decided to revert to our classic LiechtenStart - sharper and snappier - and settle into a long chug: 60 strokes per minute all the way to 100. More power, less speed.

The boys executed the strategy pretty accurately, but in the presence of not one, but two firemen teams it was never going to be a fight for first. But that's irrelevant anyway because Naval Protocol Rule #36 clearly states to "focus on OUR boat at all times and ignore the competition entirely and at all times". Thus we paddled on, tried to POWER UP at 100 and again kept chugging well beyond 130 strokes to finish in fifth (of seven). The time of 2:10 was actually pretty impressive - it would have been a third place finish in the first semi final, but that was not the one we were racing! Never mind, the top two fifth finishers got into the plate final - scrape through number two!

Scraping through would obviously not win us the Plate Final. We needed something more if we wanted to get the upper hand on the Buzz, Smugz, Lamma Dragons, Stormies, Windrider and LCSD. So we found a quiet spot on the beach, did our stretches and talked through our strategy: just do the same as in the semi, but better! Simple.

And better it was! A proper racing final, tight to the finish, fighting back and forth with the Buzz all the way. We put a proper chug down this time, deep and powerful all the way. A few strategic calls here and there seemed to do the trick and got us back on track whenever we veered off the chosen strategy. Somewhere after a hundred strokes Barnaby called the RATING UP and while a bit disjoined for a few strokes we seemed to have gotten it back together, sprinting to the line. It was close, but it was third - behind Stormies and the Buzz!

A podium finish - not too scrappy at last! Especially considering that Sailor Linstow had chosen to go AWOL for the final, forcing us to add a few extra kilos in the form of Sailor Robin, who should nevertheless be commended for sticking around the whole day as a substitute paddler!