Nereid picture of the week:

Cardcow Vintage Images

A vintage postcard titled 'Boating on the Passaic'

What's the best crab you ever saw caught?

What's the best crab you have ever seen caught - or you yourself have caught? The best crab I ever witnessed was in my first year at university. A novice men's crew was racing in Fairbairns - a particularly miserable head race held on the Cam in early December - and a medic in the 6 seat caught a boat-stopping crab, the blade handle hitting him smack in the forehead and almost - but not quite - knocking him out of the water... Obviously, he wasn't seriously hurt or I wouldn't be laughing about it 10 years later...

Anyway - I was thinking about this after reading about this poor guy's experience at the Head of the River Race on the Thames last weekend (that's the Boat Race backwards in VIIIs for those of you that haven't had the pleasure of racing it)...

Thanks to the Tideway Slug:

Also worthy of note was the performance of Alan Stepnell, the four man in HSBC’s second eight, who allowed himself to be crab-a-pulted from his seat into the Thames, 30 seconds from the finish line.

Indeed, such a showman is the aforementioned Mr Stepnell, that he waited until he was bang in front of his own boathouse before exiting the boat in such dramatic style. Once in the water, he bravely started swimming only to realise that the crew behind was bearing down upon him at speed - he then had to make a quick dash to hide between the moored boats to escape being clobbered. Whilst the phrase "another bank bailout" does come to mind, we couldn’t possibly sink to such low levels of punage – damn... too late.

The Passaic of Yore

Look how beautiful it used to be...

Back - and better than before....

Hello Nereids,

I'm going to attempt to get this gig running again, hopefully with a lot of help from you lot. Please send your favourite Nereid stories, your nicest Nereid pictures, along with any gossip, news, helpful tips, lost and found - anything you like, really - to this address.

We post, you do the commenting. But that said, we do need some more people to post if we're going to keep this going for more than the week that I managed last year.... So email the above address if you fancy trying your calloused hands at blog writing.

See you all on the water,

EC