Scrubbers

Yesterday evening, in the company of fellow Welshman Spike Jenkins, was spent doing propaganda for the lifeboat at a reception given by Bluewater, an international charter, training and crewing agency. The men and women running the business were all really helpful and nice, and extremely willing to do anything to get the lifeboat better known.

The guests were all the young prospective deckhands and stewardesses: people I had seen doing the forlorn hoofwork from yacht to yacht, clutching CVs and usually not speaking a word of French. For the first time, then, I got the chance to talk to some of them. An interesting bunch: many of them from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Some were here because Antibes is a hub of the business they are trying to get a foothold in, others, particularly the South Africans, are effectively economic migrants.

Seeing them fresh-faced and innocent, and knowing what awaits them on the boats, as scrubbers (literally for the blokes, metaphorically for the girls), was strangely moving.