Carbon boat-print

The elements conspired to ruin what could have been a nice photo shoot today. I took George down to Hythe for a meeting with the owners of Hunton, a UK-based power boat company. Unfortunately the sun stayed stubbornly behind the clouds while we were on the water. Right now it's glorious but that's life. So I had to try and to get the best from a grey boat on grey water.

To compound things I tried too many lenses and too many different settings. The autofocus on my long lens is slow so I switched to manual then forgot when I changed lenses. My prescription sunglasses are out of date so it's difficult to focus anyway, or to see the readings through the viewfinder.

Also it's far from ideal, taking a picture of a fast moving thing from another fast moving thing thats bumping all over the waves. I would have been much better on a beach or on the end of a pier. So I was left with precious few shots that I even half liked. In fact the one I've chosen was taken by George on his pocket Nikon.

I'm not a power boat fan but there's no doubting these Huntons, with their racing pedigree, are quite exhilarating at 65 mph in Southampton water - for a little time. Nice people running the company too. You could have one of these for something around £500,000. Run it at top speed for an hour and you've just burned through 400 litres of fuel - that's some carbon boat-print.