A rowing club has been left swimming against the tide after the cancellation of a popular regatta.

Wallingford Rowing Club stands to lose up to 15,000 after being forced to call off the town's regatta last weekend for the second time in three years. Its members are appealing for help from local businesses to help stem losses.

The club had spent a year organising the 20,000 event. It had hired tents, marquees and scaffolding and printed programmes.

But the regatta ran aground after warnings from the Environment Agency that the fast-moving river was too dangerous for rowers to compete. The club is wholly funded by membership fees and members fear the losses will leave it unable to pay for new equipment, repairs or running costs. Spokesman Martin Parr urged sponsors not to demand their money back.

He said: "We will have to go down on bended knees or lose thousands of pounds."

The club had taken out insurance to cover safety issues, but not financial losses, because it would have been too expensive and cancelled any profit made, Mr Parr explained.

The second cancellation has led to calls for the club to move the event to later in the year when the weather is more reliable. But regatta organisers said this was unfeasible. Chairman Roger Brown said: "We would love to reschedule it, but there are regattas up and down the Thames right through to September, so we simply can't fit it in.

"Also, the competitors are largely from universities and public schools, who tend to break up early in June, so that limits us as well.

"April showers are not a new phenomenon and it was typically a wet month, but this April has seen three times the average rainfall."

He added: "The decision was made by us. We could not risk losing our insurance cover if we went ahead and something went wrong."