May 2, 1983

In thin-skinned craft, needle-narrow and minnow-quick, a gentlemanly assemblage of former oarsmen from the Oxford and Cambridge University crews took to the water yesterday as waves, not of the Thames but the Harlem River, slapped against the sides of their boats. Uncallused hands wrapped around sturdy oars. Wrenches tightened a bolt. And then the coxswain hollered: ''When you're ready - PADDLE!'' The Cambridge boat streaked from the pier, its eight men pulling at their long oars in an unhurried rhythm. It was the final day of practice for 18 former Blues before next Sunday's three-and-a-quarter-mile Oxford and Cambridge boat race down the East River, and it came in a warm, hazy sunlight that marked the first weekend in nine without rain.

The Reagan Administration has drafted rules that would reduce the value of a new Medicare benefit for the terminally ill to about 60 percent of the level envisioned by Congress. The rules set standards and establish the maximum Federal payment for a combination known as hospice care, medical, social and psychological services, available to elderly people with a life expectancy of six months or less. Hospice care emphasizes the alleviation of pain and suffering rather than the cure of illness. It permits patients to remain at home with family and friends, for as long as possible. Ninety-five percent of hospice patients have cancer. At present, there are 40,000 hospice patients, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 270,000 would be eligible for the new benefit each year.

Two months after securing a multibillion-dollar rescue package through international financing, Brazil, the world's largest debtor nation, is seeking to borrow more money. The country's spending in the first quarter of 1983 has grown far beyond the guidelines established with the International Monetary Fund, which sponsored the rescue package along with the United States Treasury and a consortium of European and American banks, and an I.M.F. official from Washington is in Brasilia, the capital, asking for explanations. ''The program really only got started in March, and the I.M.F. may have overlooked the fact that it takes time for exports and payments of this type to generate cash surpluses,'' said Antonio Gebauer, vice president of the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company and the principal American banking figure in the international operation of assistance to Brazil. Alarm on Public Deficit He added, however, that the country would have to get ''tougher'' with the giant state companies whose debts have swollen the public deficit to a point that has alarmed the I.M.F. Brazilian officials are telling their creditor banks that they require at least $1.5 billion to overcome cash-flow problems between now and June. More pessimistic estimates in the banking community put the country's needs at $3 billion to $4 billion.

They had come to Manhattan hoping to see the circus at Madison Square Garden Saturday afternoon, but there was no matinee. So Anita Karpowich, her sister, Margaret, and their three nephews and a niece visited the Empire State Building and then strolled about Manhattan. At 5:40 P.M., as they walked in front of Walden's, a clothing store near Herald Square, a car driven by a man who the police said was drunk, hurtled into the store's plate-glass display window. Anita Karpowich was killed. Her sister and three of the children were seriously injured. ''People who drive drunk should see the devastation they can bring to a family, my family,'' said Dr. Samuel Langer, Anita Karpowich's brother-in-law and the father of Matthew Langer, a 7-year-old whose feet were mutilated when he was dragged beneath the car. ''Maybe if they came up here and saw my son in such pain and screaming, then they would stop.''

An article Friday about Gov. John Y. Brown of Kentucky incorrectly identified the state's former Transportation Secretary. He is Frank Metts.