Southampton by Chance.

We went to Southampton today for James to have an initial eye examination for laser surgery next year - he’s tired of grappling with two pairs of glasses and even more exhausted at trying to find the lost pair all the time!  Entering the city we immediately noticed the skyline above the buildings showed a red funnel………

……… and we were delighted to see it belonged to Queen Mary 2.  We parked up and ogled this magnificent vessel excitedly as we will be sailing on her ourselves from New York in early January.  At 146,000 tons she’s the biggest liner ever built – each of her four drive pods weigh more than a Boeing 747.  James has a new bottle of Autoglym and some polishing clothes ready and waiting! 

Her hooters have been specially tuned not to disturb the passengers on deck but can still be heard 10 miles away (and  James will be boring everyone senseless with statistics if we’re not careful). We were wondering which was our balcony?

After a successful eye exam James came out with pupils the size of dinner plates and, unable to drive the car, Doug took the wheel and drove the next 70 miles to Packet Boat marina for us to spend the next week on ‘Chance’.  After completing all the preparations to start cruising early in the morning we’re tucked up warm against, what is likely to be, quite a cold night.

An earlier attempt this afternoon to pump out the toilet tank resulted in an embarrassing accident when one of the marina attendants, Matt, who was helping us, got showered with some of the tank contents.  He reassured us (after profuse apologies on our part) that he keeps a clean set of clothes on site for just such an occasion!  Oh well, all in the course of boating.