As we untied the quad and lifted it off the rack, we gripped it tightly for fear it would become airborne, possibly taking us with it.

As forecast, the deluge had swamped the 2016 Australia Masters Rowing Championships at Kawana on Saturday, and the afternoon’s racing was cancelled.

Now, on Sunday morning, the wind had progressively strengthened and swung around to the west, blowing straight across the south-north course. Aaaagh. Brandenburg!

I had tightened my cap such that I worried the blood might stop flowing to my brain (hmmm, maybe that’s my problem).

We almost had one foot in the water when the announcement came – racing was suspended for half an hour due to dangerous cross-winds.

And half an hour later came the sorry news that the rest of the regatta was cancelled.

It was the right call, of course. Safety is paramount and the reports from the start line, where no buildings buffered the course, were of ocean-like swells, collisions, rolling starts, survival goals, “mayhem”, “the worst ever”.

But back on the soggy bank, we were left feeling short-changed, cheated. All of the hard work was done and, whatever about medals, we weren’t even going to get a crack at it. I’m lucky to have raced 4 of my 8 events (no bling, by the way – 4th was my best result).

My photos of Day 2 (Friday) and Day 4 (Sunday morning) are now on Flickr.

I posted my photos of  Day 1 (Thursday) earlier and they are all now in the same album.

Share widely – just remember to credit Old-fart rowing and link to my blog.

Now, ‘normal’ life shall resume… maybe. First, a stiff drink. Cheers.

Rowing photos by Mary O’Callaghan are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.