BOOM!There’s some great snaps of the F69 scuttling over in The Sinking of the Wellington flickr photo pool, like this one from Pieter Pieterse.

Thankfully this particular Wellingtonista lives just around the corner from the Bay, so didn’t have to brave the heavy traffic and sometimes incomprehensively inconsiderate parking of the many people who had made their way to the Southern Coast to witness the event. To whoever parked their car right on the corner of the blind turn that connects Moselle to Severn Streets, we salute you – the only way you could have made the situation more dangerous was to perhaps pour some oil onto the road.

Still, the crowd was enthused and well behaved, even as the scheduled time ticked past, and the tension started to mount. And then, a flare, and a second, a cannon shot from the shore, and then BOOM! and down she went.