These are the first tranche of pics that we took as a family - just from my camera. I will have a hunt thru the others to see if there are any worth posting. Oddly, I don't seem to have taken any at the party itself - my memory is a little cloudy but I do remember lots of flashes going off.
Please feel free to add your own pics to this thread.
We couldn't have asked for better weather in May. Saturday strated off bright and breezy, and very warm. We headed out from Poole through the 10:30 bridge lift, and pretty soon we had Old Harry in our wake.
It wasn't too long afterwards that the Needles came up. Followed by Yarmouth and hey presto we're in the Solent.
The Western Solent was pretty quiet, but once we got down towards Calshot it got too busy to be able to worry about taking any more pics, as was the Hamble itself. Just got one shot worth sharing of some of the swarms of Optimists out on the river.
The afternoon and evening are a bit of a blur - just remember waking up in the cockpit in the wee small hours having missed Elessar's crew from Evenstar 3 attempting to recreate the famous "Passage of the Argonath" scene from LOTR1 - without the aid of canoes! (Oi'm cummin wiv you Mr Frodo)
It was a fabulous, but freezing cold night, and I woke again in time to see Galadriel depart early. There were lots of forumites left though. Spot the Forumites boats - clustered on C and D pontoons.
We headed off to the Water's Edge for breakfast and unfortunately managed to miss waving off KevB, D3B, and many others while engaged in our FEB's.
Leaving at 12 the weather didn't look too promising, but we decided to head for Totland Bay for a late lunch. We were pretty much the only ones there all afternoon; and lo and behold the sun came back out with a vengeance after a very short while, and we had a scorcher of an afternoon. Break out the Ambre Solaire!
By 17:00 it was time to go - Hurst Narrows was empty and flat calm.
Opened up the throttles and we were off with the sea to ourselves. Knew it was all too good to last though. We'd just cleared all the lobbies off Christchurch ledge when BANG - 28 Knots to not-very-fast-at-all in no time flat. We'd picked up a 6' long bit of nylon warp around the starboard props.
We managed to get it cut off and freed up the props again, but when I restarted and engaged the drive all we got was thick acrid smoke. B*gg*r!!!!
We limped home across Bournemouth Bay on the port engine and just managed to catch the 19:30 bridge. She's being lifted out Wednesday to assess the damage - I fear that its going to be expensive.
Still despite all of this, and consequently not getting home til past midnight the entire family agreed that this has been the most enjoyable weekend we have had out on the water for a very long time. I hope that everyone else had at least half as much fun as we had - you'll have had a whale of a time.
Mercury Meet - Photo Album
Hybrid Mode
