Cowes Week

Well I think it has been a while since I have made an entry here... so thought I ahould put something down for the Sailing Trip I went on over the weekend.

Since going to the Isle of Wight just after Cowes week - years ago I have always wanted to go and have a look, so when this trip I came up, I jumped at the opportunity.

The total group was about 25 people over 3 yachts. Each day meeting up with the other boats a few times.

I was on Nerdvana I (yeah some of the boats do have strange names...) After a get together meal on the first night, we spent our first night aboard the boat at it's normal mooring in Hamble (nr Southampton).

Then we went sailing on Friday morning... after a bit of a practice we sailed to Osborne Bay just off the Isle of Wight, where we moored up for a little bit. After some more sailing in the afternoon -We had some wind albeit not great wind for sailing but the sun more than made up for it - we headed towards Cowes to take our spot for the Fireworks that evening.

We then had a nice surprise as not only was there an air display from a couple of jets while the Oriana sailed out of Southampton, but before we knew what was happening the Red Arrows arrived for a display above the Solent too - fantastic!

The fireworks did not come over quite so well in the photos as I was taking them from the boat. We had quite an amazing trip back to Hamble on the mainland at the end of the fireworks as we were among the hundreds of boats that had been watching them from the Solent and it was a bit of a ratrace as everyone travelled back to their respective ports in the dark.

The next day we took part in a inter-boat race... I don't think it was all down to the fact that our skipper may have given us a spot more help than the others teams got... Anyhow the other teams called the race off, because they knew they could not catch up with us. This was a bit of a shame really as we were doing so well...

However we had been promised a night out that evening and our skipper's managed to get us in to eat at a nice pub not too far inland from Cowes (we still could not get a mooring at Cowes due to it being so busy). We enjoyed our evening out with good food at the pub and some live music later on. You are encouraged to dance on the tables at the pub which made for an interesting evening although I declined to do that on health and safety grounds... ie the ceiling was not very high...

After a lively evening, we had a slowish start the next morning, but luckily we were early enough to get to see the start of one of the main groups in the fastnet race. The BT boat on the right went on to win the race, which involves sailing round a small rock just south of Ireland before heading to the finish in Plymouth. It took nearly 3 days for them to complete the race.

After that it was a bit of a wind down as we had to head back to Hamble for the end of the trip, but we managed to catch a bit more wind and sail a bit more on our trip back into Hamble.

I don't think this will be the last of my Solent adventures.

I hope that everyone is well!

Tim