Mike and Charles Hall crewed me Friday, so that Julia and I could have a day in Cowes on the Saturday. The sun shone, and we had enough wind to fly the chute to the Forts, but had to motor after that as it was so light. Mike & Charles enjoyed themselves, and the supply of Stella was almost exhausted on arrival at Shepards!

They rushed off to retrieve cars and attend various social obligations, and Julia came over on the RedJet in time for dinner at Mojac’s restaurant. We had wanted to try this for some time. Whilst the food was good and the staff polite, the wait for the first course made us lose our appetite and interest. And the wait for the main course was equally unbearablly long. We were also shoved upstairs having made the effort to ring a booking through a few days beforehand, and were thus stuck out of the way where there was no atmosphere. So we have  crossed that one off the list!  

Saturday morning the forecast rain never appeared and whilst it wasn’t as warm as Friday, it was very pleasant. We took Selene down to the Folly around 11:30, and were of course the first ECA boat there. Unlike last year, this time, we had space allocated. As the weather was so nice, we enjoyed bubbles in the sunshine, and delayed touristing in Cowes until later.

We got the waterbus (Dave on 77) to take us into Cowes and had some lunch and retail therapy. Paul & Zara duly arrived around 4:15 and we got Dave to bring us back to Selene. We crossed APB’s path as he was coming from the Folly to meet Beth, APB having crewed John E Burton in Roussillon over - so we knew he was already on the pontoon.

Upon our return, along with Roussillon, there were Jez & Nicky in Ransom (with brother David & friend Wes) along with Tony Browne in Elwing 2. After more bubbles in the cockpit, we attended the usual drinks party aboard Roussillon and saw Richard & Helen in on Kotka, and finally Peggy arrived with John & Jackie crewing Vic and Brenda.

The Folly was very busy and we had to endure the usual queues, but Andy had saved us some space, so we were all together. We got into the usual table dancing, and we also bumped into Sarah, the Rear Commodore of our yacht club, the Royal Victoria!

Sunday morning, the rain again held off, and although there was some wind it was from the East! So we did a couple of tacks across the Solent and then had to motor-sail from Wootton.

We were last to leave, but first to arrive passing most of the others at the Dolphins.

Once we turned into Chichester Harbour, we were able to sail again, and we even got Zara helming!

The rain held off, and we were able to have drinks in the cockpit, before retiring to the Coal Exchange with all the gang for a couple of pints of Gales.