The nice thing about the Wight Ryders is the fact that they have an open deck which passengers can use in all but inclement weather or after dark, whereas the old Fastcats had no such facility. The Wight Ryders are slower but that's not a bad thing on a pleasant(ish) day when you're not in any hurry and great for taking photos.
There were a few ship movements in Portsmouth, including Normandie Express, on one of her last trips before her winter hibernation...
...the local pilot boats...
...local ferries...
...refrigerated cargo ship Crown Opal, with another load of bananas and other fruit...
...and local bunkering tanker Whitchallenger, which supplies fuel to the ships in ports along the South Coast.
Finally, half an hour later than scheduled, Wind Surf began to move. For once I didn't need to look at the AIS app on my phone to see if a ship was moving because we could plainly see her masts above the buildings of the dock yard. She was supposed to depart at 1700 but, presumably because of Crown Opal's arrival, had to wait and left at 1730, which was cutting it a little fine for my 1815 ferry back to Ryde bearing in mind I had to get back across the harbour.
Here she is, sailing out of the harbour with a backdrop of threatening clouds; the weather has changed to more seasonably unsettled and with temperatures cut in half to a chillier 15-18°C from highs of 31°C last week.
Wind Surf is a seriously pretty ship. Maybe, one day, with fossil fuels depleted, all cruise ships will look like this?
Once she was out of the way, I hurried back to the Gosport ferry terminal to catch the incoming Spirit of Gosport and made it to the Wightlink terminal with a couple of minutes to spare.
I hadn't been to Gosport in years, it's probably been at least 21 years since I was last there - when I was in the navy - and it reminded me of why I don't like the place. The waterfront has been tidied up and a marina built but, as far as I'm concerned, it's not that much of an improvement on the place (and the new marina has destroyed feeding places for winter wading birds). I much prefer staying on the Portsmouth side and going to the Round Tower and Southsea, but the light is generally unfavourable from there in the afternoon.
St Helen was on the Odds and Evens.
As we left, and as the light was beginning to fade Bretagne arrived from St Malo with some impressively coloured clouds in the background.
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The plans for the coming weekend have changed slightly. We're still doing the trip but the ship we were supposed to travel on to Morocco and back has been switched to another route, to Algeria (which requires a visa to visit and, from what I understand, isn't the most sensible country to visit), so we have Vronskiy, better known in these parts as Brittany Ferries' Duc de Normandie, instead. I'd rather have travelled on Sherbatskiy, the former Oleander (which began life as Pride of Free Enterprise) instead but we will - I hope! - still at least get to see her because she's still sailing from Almeria. Still, it'll be interesting to see what the ex-Duc de Normandie is like, the last time I travelled on her was around 22 years ago. What else we get to see, I don't know, but it should be an interesting trip.
