We held our South East Cluster Rally over the Eastbourne Airbourne weekend – we hoped it would attract more people, but seemed to have had the opposite effect! Could be that August is a busy month for everyone, oh well back to the drawing board. Despite that there were twelve of us and eveyone had a good time. We held a barbecue on Friday 14th, and were fortunate with the weather, as on the Thursday we had storms and torrential rain. Sovereign Harbour let us use the area in West Harbour in front of the facility block and it was just right for us, some of us went there by dinghy which was a bit of fun. On Saturday everyone took their boats out to watch Airbourne at sea, it was a special occasion as the Vulcan Bomber was flying that day, and this is the last year it will be in service. Sea was flat calm as we came out but chopped up later, we decided to mooch around rather than anchor which was more comfortable. We saw our friends Ian & Lyn out there too, they had come along on their fishing boat from Normans Bay, and like us returned after the Vulcan had flown over. All the Westerly members went to Simply Italian in the evening for a meal, and we asked along some friends of ours, John and Ann, who used to own Kiwi, a Westerly Centaur. Very nice evening, rounded off with a walk to the seafront to watch the Airbourne fireworks at the pier, a bit far away, but we could still see them quite well.
Some of us at the barbeque
Vulcan flying over Eastbourne
We also had a day out on Hurkur, when the weather was actually quite nice (few and far between this summer) and Eddie did a little fishing off the back of the boat while I sailed her slowly towards Bexhill. But no luck with that so we had a pleasant sail back to Harbour. Next trip will possibly be to Chichester in September, bus as always we will see what the forecast is – there is a Westerly Rally there so we hope to make it. We are also on the WOA stand at the Southampton Boat Show on Friday just before, so thats another incentive to get Hurkur down that way.