A year in the life of a Pilot Gig Club.

With a new season upon us and the 2016 race calendar taking shape, it’s nice to reflect on the past years’ events.

The club have had an incredibly successful year not only competing in our usual races such as the gruelling 5 mile Three Rivers Race in Saltash but adventuring off to uncharted territory (well for us anyway). Back in May we entered The World Pilot Gig Championships, where we shipped our beautiful boats Tamar and Ginette over to the Isles of Scilly, along with a veteran crew, two mens and two ladies crews. The race conditions were rough with some chopping water, wind and rain, all of which just helped to increase the sense of achievement with all the training coming to fruition, with some great results.

In late August 2015, we sent our lovely boat Ginette all the way to Fort William in Scotland, with a boat crew of 10 and a land crew of 5 (equipped with a van and vital tea making facilities). We began an epic 4 day row along the Caledonian Canal to Inverness, this mammoth trek was a total of 66 miles and passed through 29 locks, with camping each night along the way. The crew were incredibly lucky with the weather, despite some wild wind and lumpy water on Loch Ness, there was hardly a drop of rain and plenty of sunshine.

Just a few weeks later and Ginette (with a few of the same hardy crew) was shipped off again for The Great London River Race, at 21 miles through some of London's most stunning landmarks and some 330 crews from all over the world, it really was a spectacle like no other and now a regular event on our racing schedule.

With 2016 now shaping up to be another great year with the racing season underway and training for the World Championships in full swing, we’re also very excited to announce that building work has begun on our new boat shed at Weir Quay.

If you’d like to join us on our next adventure or just want to get fit and enjoy the river during our social rows, then you can find out more at www.tamarandtavygigclub.co.uk or facebook.co