We had arrived in the Isle of Man just before the gates had dropped and we were moored up. That was the end of our personal race but what of the others how had they faired. I was curious to find out how every one else did, so I took the camera equipment that we had carried across for Jackknife and went down to the visitor pontoon outside the harbour entrance to watch others arrive.
At the visitors pontoon I watched several yachts arrive, including Mojito, who were drinking a beer to celebrate their arrival, they told me they would have a Mojito later, which I expect they did when they found out they had one. Also on the pontoons was Chris from the yacht Aurelia who was one of the yachts from the ISORA series and they had come all the way from Dublin to compete in the 99th Isle of Man Midnight race all the way from Liverpool.
To meet the yachts as they arrived was a lady from the Douglas Bay Yacht club, who was greeting the competitors with information about the Isle of Man, a drink of water or coke, but more importantly an invitation to the yacht club bar-b-cue later that night.
After pre's on Salty Lass we went down to Douglas Bay Yacht club where we joined in on a bar-b-cue, had a right laugh with the competitors and listened to the speeches and more importantly the results.
The next day, I watched all the ISORA yachts off on their next adventure which was a race to a mark outside Conway. By competing in the Isle of Man midnight race and the race to the mark, all the yachts would of logged enougth sea miles to compete in the around Ireland race.
Even though all the ISORA yachs were gone, there were still a few yachts from Liverpool and Beverley and I chated to their crews over coffee in a local café. We returned to Salty Lass for a late lunch, for which we made shepards pie. After lunch we went for a walk around Douglas with Charlotte to grab some ice-cream, while Niel went for a swim. After some rather good Manx ice-cream we saw Charlotte off at the ferry terminus which locally is called the lemon juicer.
