Tall Ships Races 2015 - Parade of Sail

Tens of thousands of people took a chance on the weather - a good bet in the end - and flooded Titanic Quarter and the Belfast Harbour this morning to see the Red Arrows fly past and the Tall Ships depart to the north coast start line of their race.

Crowds lined the shoreline as the event seemed certain to hit its target of half a million visitors to Tall Ships events in and around the LIDL Belfast Titanic Maritime Festival.

Soon the ships were motoring out into the lough to get into position for the Sail Training International race start off Portrush at 10am on Monday and heading to Ålesund.

Ships like the Guayas started to unfurl and set their sails - wouldn't fancy being the sailor at the top of each mast!

Other vessels kept an eye on the ships ...

Heading back into Belfast Harbour just before 5pm, the crowds had gone, the blue t-shirted volunteers and liaison officers volunteers all but two tall ships had departed, stalls were being disassembled, the Belfast Telegraph souvenir programme sellers had given up flogging the good-but-overpriced brochure [£6 on Thursday, dropped to £5 on Friday and £3 after the Red Arrows had flown over this morning] and Belfast was returning to normal.