ORGANISERS of the Weymouth Sea Festival declared Sunday's festivities a 'washout' and are hoping the skies hold out for today's bumper celebration.

The Bank Holiday downpour meant a large part of yesterday's entertainment, including all the water-based activities, had to be scrapped after weeks of organisation.

However, Sea Festival chairman Peter Target is promising that a large part of the day's entertainment will be rescheduled to fit in today's action packed line-up, weather permitting.

Mr Targett said: "We abandoned most of it because of the weather. Everything was getting drowned.

"We didn't do any of the waterborne activities and in my personal opinion it's a complete and utter washout.

"We reopened the roads to traffic as there was no reason to be pedantic about this.

"All the people are coming back and hopefully we'll have a bigger event today."

There were several stalls open despite the weather and the crowds still braved the elements alongside the harbour.

Rendezvous, the Sea Festival's main sponsor, moved their musical entertainment inside the pub, with an all-day line-up of live bands to thrill the punters.

One of the stalls that attracted plenty of rain-soaked visitors was the oyster stand outside The Crow's Nest restaurant in Hope Square, part of the weekend-long Oyster Festival.

Peter Ledger, who runs the Crow's Nest, said: "The weather has put a major dampener on things but the oyster festival still carries on today.

"We sold a few oysters as a few braved the weather and came out, we've certainly got a few dustbins full of shells to get rid of.

"When it did stop raining people came out quickly and most of the seats in the Crow's Nest were packed all day."

According to the police there were no major incidents.

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