I never could get the hang of Thursdays...

... and I've never particularly thought of myself as having a self-image problem, but it seems I do. You see, until last Thursday, I've never seen myself as the type of person who finds themselves being rescued by the RNLI. But it turns out that I am exactly the type of person who the RNLI rescue, particularly on a Thursday.

Allow me to explain...

We were out in a coxed four. There was a plan for the outing. It was complicated, but as I recall it involved doing lots of hard work. Having got down to Putney with a warm up and some technical work, we spun to head upstream against the tide and start the hard work. It was all going pretty well until we put a hole in our boat whilst being washed onto an island emerging under the ebb tide by a largish boat which was very evidently breaking the speed limit.

Now, boats tend not to float too well when they have holes in them. In fact, if our experience just upstream of Putney Bridge was anything to go by, they acquire extra water at an alarming rate. I cursed our decision to go out in the more spacious and capacious four (lacking buoyancy compartments) rather than taking the older, more tiny and altogether more knackered but ultimately more buoyant four.

We had a problem.

We rapidly donned wellies and got out of the boat into thigh-deep river. We picked up the boat and squelched through the mud onto the foreshore just upstream of Putney Bridge, with water streaming out of the hole under the bow seat.

Out of the river, and holding our boat on the foreshore, we assessed the situation. The tide was going out. This was A Very Good Thing. It gave us lots of time to work out what to do before being in trouble with a rising tide. It was also summer, and despite our soaking and the rapidly dropping sun, we seemed unlikely to develop hypothermia. It also became obvious at this stage that the little we could recall of the outing plan was largely irrelevant.

Arms aching, we looked for somewhere to stash the stricken boat temporarily whilst we formulated a plan. We'd normally carry out this manoeuvre up at the club, where we have reasonably-designed trestles to put boats on whilst we faff. But there aren't many trestles on the foreshore. However, there is an ample supply of mud and rock, so we piled some rocks up and plonked the boat down whilst we faffed some more, with the first priority being to empty our wellies of excess river water.

Freed from the need to hold the boat, we explored possible escape routes. Fortunately, we'd managed to run aground in a rather handy location, just a few tens of metres from an easy means of escape - a flight of steps up to the embankment. Getting ourselves safe was therefore easy. Getting the boat back to decent racking via that route would have been more of a challenge. Not only were the steps reasonably steep, but Mother Nature had chosen precisely that flight of steps to demonstrate her ability to triumph over any environment by growing a large and leafy tree in the middle of a load of concrete. Satisfied that it would be several hours before we need to concern ourselves with life an limb, we returned to the problem of how to get our boat and kit off the foreshore and to somewhere it could be repaired.

It was at about this point that a constable and PCSO peered over the wall to ask if we needed any help. Now, despite my natural instinct to deny any need for help whatsoever, even I was forced to admit that a couple of cops with radios and colleagues might be handy at that point.

After a sizable amount of additional faffing, we asked the police to get in touch with our club to try to get someone to come down in a launch bringing some tape for emergency repairs so we could tow the boat back to the club. It was a solid enough plan, but unfortunately, there was no answer at the club. They tried the club again. No answer. They then got concerned that we might die of hypothermia and offered us space blankets. As we were beginning to get cold with the sun dropping and the wind picking up, we made our way up to the embankment and shared two foil blankets between five of us. This evidently wasn't sufficient, so the nice constable radioed for colleagues to bring additional space blankets for five girls in minimal clothing who'd got a bit wet and shivery.

I was feeling somewhat embarrassed. I work with cops and Specials. I didn't fancy one of my colleagues turning up to 'rescue' me.

We must still have looked cold even with sharing foil blankets, personal space and body heat, as the first cop tried in vain to get us indoors to a local cafe. We all insisted we were fine. (I was cold. I insisted I was fine. Why do I do this?) After a while, he gave up trying to get us into the cafe and instead went to appeal to the better nature of the cafe owner, who provided free tea for us all. This was most welcome.

A few minutes later, three uniforms, two space blankets and car answered the call. I was relieved to not recognise any of my colleagues, and also to have my own space blanket and no longer have to spoon one of my crewmates.

At some point, one of our rowing buddies hurtled past on a training run. We flagged her down, explained the situation, and she hurtled home to get a mobile phone to call a contact at another club to get a launch out for us. Unfortunately, it being Henley week, no bugger was around. We were beginning to despair of anyone with a boat turning up before the tide turned, when a four from one of the Putney clubs sliced into view. Our cox recognised the blades and hailed the club. Their coach very kindly made his way over to the Fulham bank to see what he could do.

He didn't have any tape, so taping up and towing to his club wasn't an option. He did however take our blades and cox up the river to hunt down our launch (out with the novices) to bring the necessary kit (a launch and some tape).

Unbeknown to us, the first cop had evidently got sufficiently bored of the situation that he'd got colleagues to call RNLI. They turned up with a pleasingly large rigid inflatable thing, with blue flashing lights and three sturdy-looking chaps, just as help arrived from the club (launch, coach and tape). It was at about this point that I realised the whole thing was descending into farce, and the chaps from the RNLI were serious about rescuing us.

We piled into their boat, leaving a couple of the RNLI chaps to move our damaged four. We then got sufficiently concerned for the welfare of the boat (being left in non-rowing hands), that two of us jumped out again into the waist-deep water to give them a hand lifting and carrying. I ended up back in the Thames, chest-deep and grateful for my height, supporting our four at head-height whilst it was strapped to one side of the inflatable. I clambered back into the boat. I was wet. It was cold. Did I want a nice, warm, ambulance blanket? No thanks, I was fine.

Fool...

There was a rather nice sunset on the journey home, which seemed unfeasibly long (probably because I was cold and having a rather large sense of humour failure, because everything was now fine and I could safely indulge in wanton self-pity.) I was therefore enormously grateful to arrive back at the club, thank and bid farewell to our 'rescuers', be ordered into the showers, informed that there were plenty of the novices around to deal with our boat and launch etc., and that my job was to get clean and warm and up to the bar to drink tea and eat free sandwiches. For the first time that evening, I wasn't going to refuse the offer of help.

A week on, I resolutely blame the whole sorry affair on it being a Thursday...