Changing face

New apartments,  new restaurants and bars, and even a new hotel under construction . . .  Southampton’s waterfront is changing beyond recognition.
This area was once lined with cargo sheds and was the base for cross Channel shipping when I first new it, and long before the era of being able to drive your car right onto the ferry.
But Southampton is the one south coast port where the economics of commercial shipping, passenger cruise liners and leisure craft sit side by side on the city’s waterfront, yet all linked by the common factor of the sea.
When the days of cross Channel ferries came and went, the lifeblood of this particular part of the waterfront took an entirely different direction and Ocean Village was born.  You don’t need to be a sailor or seafarer to live here, but if you are, the attractions are obvious.
And the views from the sea facing apartments are out of this world.
It’s also one reason the marina village is home to the Royal Southampton Yacht Club, which curiously although one of the oldest yacht clubs in the country, had never had its headquarters even close to the water before Ocean Village was built and  the club moved from its then base in a former hotel in the city.

The foundation stone for the new Yacht Club premises was formally laid by the Admiral,  HRH Prince Michael of Kent in September 1987,  and were opened by him a year later. Till then, the Club’s main access to the water was at its second clubhouse, at Gins on the Beaulieu River. That was opened in 1964 and the Yacht Club is still alone in the region of the prime sailing waters of the Solent to enjoy the facilities of  having two waterfront clubhouses.