The Westerly Owners' Association - East Coast Group

Barbecue at The Tidemill, Woodbridge, 28 August 2010

The weather leading up to the Bank Holiday weekend showed its usual tendency towards rain and wind, but all the visiting boats managed to find small windows of fair conditions to arrive as intended on Friday or Saturday. In all we had two resident boats and six visitors, the last arriving with only a foot to spare of ebbing tide over the sill. Two owners had volunteered to act as host boats for the drinks and nibbles in the event of rain, but happily it stayed dry, though very breezy and rather cool. The essential drinks and nibbles to get the party started, and the BBQ fuel, were on board Hunters Moon, berthed in a distant inconvenient corner. To ease the transport problem, Andy Clark kindly used his tender from Falcon to move everything to the barbecue site, help that was much appreciated. Sea transport makes sense! We had expected 19 people, 23 arrived, but the supplies were enough to cope. Cooking started around 7 pm, to an amazing variety of menus, and the fire lasted a good two hours. By 10 pm, the stalwarts were using the embers for hand warming and bacon grilling. You can see from the dress code that it was chilly.

Sunday was very windy, and only two boats left that day, one of which needed to be in Burnham on Monday. The time in Woodbridge was used by two new owners to pick the brains of others on details of their craft, with some degree of success. In the evening, Rick Dines very kindly invited all those still in harbour to pre-dinner drinks on board Limelight. How many people can you get on an Oceanquest? Well, Rick had around 13 there with plenty of room to spare!

Monday was still windy, though the strength was easing down, and most visitors left on the first stage of their trips home. An excellent weekend, despite a few weather problems, and it was a pleasure to see some new faces at the gathering.

Participating boats were: Angela Dawn, Apollo XI, Falcon, Hunters Moon, Limelight, Travelling Light, Two plus Two, and Snow Queen