Rotterdam

Holland America Line's Rotterdam is an infrequent visitor to the Solent, and was scheduled to arrive in Southampton at 1200 today. As it happened, the ETA changed and she was due to arrive at 1100 instead. Bugger, that meant I had to get up an hour earlier! Before getting up (lazy git that I am) I checked Marine Traffic AIS and saw she was picking up the pilot at the Nab so I got up, got dressed and went straight to Cowes. I had a bit of time to spare, so I hoped the kiosk on the seafront was open, as I wanted a cup of coffee, having not had one before leaving. It wasn't. Damn. Although that was probably really no bad thing because you don't buy coffee you only rent it and the public toilets were shut for the winter (because, of course, no-one actually needs to go to the loo between September and April, do they?). I went back to the car and waited.
Luckily the weather was beautiful, after the torrential rain and thunder of the night before, if the strong breeze was cold. A great day for ship photography!

In the meantime, I photographed Heather C which was anchored just off Cowes.

It wasn't long before something large loomed round the corner...I did notice that, as soon as she was in a good position for photography, WAFIs and other small craft flotsam started an exodus from Cowes Harbour! Every bloody time...!!

Naturally, a Red Funnel ferry got in the way. If a Red Funnel didn't get in the way, you'd start to wonder if you'd ended up in a parallel universe because it wouldn't be normal if Red Funnels didn't get in the way. Actually, that said, I like this pic and it is my favourite of the bunch.

The Red Funnels had to wait. Red Eagle had to wait until Rotterdam had gone past and Red Osprey had to wait until Red Eagle was out of the way!

Recently I offloaded my old Canon 40D DSLR, as I no longer used it, and I had intended to get a bridge camera (one of those SLR-looking superzoom compacts) for those times when it's not possible to carry my Canon 7D and lenses with me. I found that I could do a straight swap at our local camera shop for a Pentax X5, a 16 megapixel device which has a lens with a 35mm equivalent of 22mm to 560mm. I have to say that I am pretty pleased with the results so far, at least on the cats, dogs and garden, and I tried it out today. Technology moves on and this blows my first ever digital camera, a Minolta Z2 I bought in mid-2004, out of the water. It's not DSLR and L-series lens quality, of course, and they'd always be my first choice for serious photography, but pretty good all the same.

Once Rotterdam had rounded Calshot, I headed home. You can always tell which are the ship photographers' cars because, once the object of attention has gone past, they all drive off!

Back in August I visited Rotterdam's fleet mate Maasdam, a similar design, but with a different funnel and stern. Click here to read about it.

Rotterdam will be back this way on December 5th.