Dart Gig Club continued their season's racing by making their first-ever visit to the village of Portmellon last Saturday.

The host club was Mevagissey, who had had to cancel their Tribute series event earlier in the season, always held at Pentewan Sands, due to bad weather.

Portmellon is a small cove on the south side of Mevagissey, approached via the narrow streets of Meva or by a longer circuitous route via Gorran, quite a hairy route if you are towing a gig.

A dozen Cornish clubs attended with Dart being the only club from Devon and they were presented with a bottle of bubbly for their trouble.

Rain greeted the rowers' arrival, which persisted for a couple of hours, but eventually the sun did come out lifting spirits considerably.

The tide was on its way out when the gigs were unloaded onto the beach and proceeded to go out a very long way and extremely swiftly to reveal a swamp of lush deep green seaweed.

The tide here is massive. It went out quickly and seemed to come back in such a short space of time that mad panic ensued to dismantle gazebos and remove belongings from the beach before they were swallowed up by the sea.

The beach completely disappeared and where, five minutes previously, children had been building sandcastles, a metre of sea weedy water was lapping against the sea wall.

The field was much stronger than the previous week, with strong clubs such as Fowey, Charlestown, Mounts Bay and Helford taking part, so the club were pleased with their efforts.

Results were as follows: ladies' A 10th position, ladies' B eighth, men's A eighth, men's B fifth, ladies' vets fourth, mixed fifth. A second crew went out in the mixed, three Dart ladies jumped in with three Devoran men, and finished third.

After the gales of last week, the seas had moderated, with the greater part of the race taking place in flat water in the lee of the coast. A little bit of swell was experienced on legs two and three.

The ladies' A crew with two novice rowers had a good strong row but took a while to settle and finished ahead of the host club and Zennor.

The ladies' B were down on the start but made up ground quickly and passed Zennor and Gorran to finish half a length behind Mevagissey. The ladies' vets fared well, finishing fourth in front of Charlestown, Zennor and Helford despite Zennor coming in on Dart's stern on every mark.

Martin Walton of the host club was purloined to make up the men's A crew. The cox's goal became to beat the host club rowing in Endurance. It was well up the first leg before the crew started to edge ahead to give them water on the first mark and they maintained their lead to come in ahead of Endurance.

The men were still one man down for the B race so Chloe Gardner hopped in the bow seat. The men had another solid row, producing a much better result than the A race, rowing against crews of similar ability.

Ladies' squad: Peta Chivers, Clare Thorp, Jo Haydn, Ella Chivers, Bonnie Chivers, Chloe Gardner, Mary Eames, Karen Gardner, Maggie Russell, Wendy Jones, Carol Squire, Shirley Waycott

Men's squad: Paul Kunert, Michael Bryant-Mole, Stan Bray, Tom Holloway, Jonny Holmes, Martin from Meva in the A race and Chloe in the B race.

Coxes: Paul Kunert and Clare Thorp. Thanks to Kevin Pyne for umpiring as always.