One of the buildings in Antibes which opened its doors was the Coastguard look-out station, or 'sémaphore', up on the Garoupe plateau next to the lighthouse and the church. It is manned, 24/24, by specialised French Navy personnel, and since they still had their job to do, they asked the Lifeboat Service for a hand in showing people around. It was a nice assignment, as we met a lot of people, and working with the sailors (many of them now female) was good fun.
We profited from the forced presence of dozens of people queuing in the hot sun to vaunt the utility of the lifeboats, pointing out that when the coastguards identified a vessel in trouble, they usually sent us, even though we were unpaid civilian volunteers. To be fair to the sailors, they spent their whole time praising us, which was embarrassing but nice.
Just to prove our usefulness, our beepers rang three times during the day, so we piled into whatever cars were available (old wrecks) and headed down the corniche into town and on to the lifeboat station. For the first two beeps, we had already started to cast off, with the motors roaring, when the order countermanding the sortie came through on the radio. So back to the Coastguard station, handling crowds and questions...
The third beep came just as we were about to tuck into a delayed lunch. This time it was for real. We sped out of the harbour in search of an injured jet-skier in the water, with suspected spinal injuries and difficulties in breathing. Not easy to spot against the sun, but we found her and started the slow, painstaking job of getting her (it was a young woman) onto an orthopaedic stretcher in the water, stabilising her head, shoulders, pelvis etc, and craning her onboard with the minimum of movement to her body. Here is her wetsuit, afterwards: needs a bit of needle and cotton work before it can be put on again. I suspect it was hired...
As you may have gathered, once on the lifeboat a couple of us attended to her, unceremoniously cutting off her wetsuit with scissors to check for bleeding or embedded objects, whilst others administered oxygen and checked her blood oxygen. I have to stress that she was wearing a bathing suit, but we would have removed the wetsuit all the same. Meanwhile, we needed to get the boat ready for coming alongside a suitable landing stage to put the casualty near to an ambulance.
She didn't die on us, which was good, and this lunchtime I had a telephone call from the coxswain to say that though she was still in hospital having her - probably serious - injuries assessed, she wasn't at risk of paralysis.
So back, in the battered old cars, to the Coastguard station, and more people to show around. After the last curious visitors were chased out of the military precinct, the officer commanding the base offered the ubiquitous pastis to all and sundry, as the sun set, and the lighthouse began its regular illumination of the Coastguard barracks. Eaten alive by the mozzies, though, as they thrive in the dank plantations of all the millionaires who have houses on the Cap d'Antibes.
Finally got a lift home, or nearly home, in the car of my parrain, or lifeboat buddy, which alarmingly conked out about thirty times coming down the hill. I thanked him, and then walked the rest of the way. Hope he got home...
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