Festival is shipshape despite rain
AN OLD fishing friend and her new graceful sailing companion helped draw bumper crowds to a successful Yarmouth Maritime Festival. Despite the odd heavy shower about 30,000 people flocked to the resort's South Quay over the weekend to join in the celebration of Yarmouth's great seafaring history.
AN OLD fishing friend and her new graceful sailing companion helped draw bumper crowds to a successful Yarmouth Maritime Festival.
Despite the odd heavy shower about 30,000 people flocked to the resort's South Quay over the weekend to join in the celebration of Yarmouth's great seafaring history.
One of the biggest draws on the quayside by the River Yare was the restored herring drifter the Lydia Eva, which was part of the town's massive fishing fleet in the 1930s.
Docked by the Lydia Eva was the festival's latest attraction, the Dutch square-rigged tall ship the Brig Mercedes.
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Queues formed at the ship as eager landlubbers took the opportunity to spend an hour on the waves on the vessel, which had replaced festival favourite the Grand Turk - a replica 18th century frigate used in the Hornblower television series.
The eighth annual festival also saw RNLI lifeboats, Gardline survey vessels, a HMRC cutter, a second world war motor torpedo boat and the Lowestoft-based sailing trawler the Excelsior.
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Despite the rain preventing record- breaking crowds, the initial print of the event's programmes had sold out within hours of opening on Saturday morning.
For the full report and pictures see Friday's Mercury
