It's been a while

It's been a while since my last post. Over five weeks, in fact.

During that time the lifeboat has been pulled out of the water and given a thorough scrape to get rid of the barnacles, and then repainted with a blue paint which wasn't quite the regulation blue of the SNSM (as the inspecting engineer from Paris dryly remarked), but did correspond to the blue of the previous, mythical vedette. Local sensibilities matter here! The propellers were taken off and remachined, to rid them of serious vibrations caused by unbalanced rotation. Similarly, the engines were given an overhaul, and the propshaft seals and cutless bearings (burnt out from high speed rescues) were replaced. A lot of money and a good deal of crew time went into repairing the ravages of a hard season's rescue service. Most of us are still bearing the odd spot of blue paint somewhere on our skin. Still, the good ship Notre Dame de la Garoupe II is now back on station, though there are still crucial bits of maintenance we still have to do, particularly on the aft hatch for the auxiliary inflatable.

Similarly, this autumn, I have been hauled out of normal life, and have been expensively stripped down, overhauled and repaired. I have been seeing the French health service and hospitals from the inside, and they are pretty impressive. Like with the lifeboat, there is still some crucial work to do on my innards, which will mean passing Christmas in hospital, with a catheter instead of a propshaft seal. Still, I hope to be back on station sometime in the new year.