No pictures in this post. I was too busy up at the signal station, helping out with doors open day. The queue to get into the observation tower was really long and slow moving, and the coastguards had plenty to do in the normal run of things, let alone the weekend when the public is unleashed amongst their radars, computers and giant binoculars (hint: I wouldn't mind a set for Christmas, but our floors would need to be reinforced to carry the weight). Ideal conditions, then, to do a bit of propaganda on behalf of the lifeboat service.
Our star turn, as it happened, was explaining what was in an inflatable liferaft. We had inflated one just outside the gates, and had displayed the survival gear, including the rations. The kids really liked the emergency rations, particularly the biscuit. I told them they shared their approval with my feathered friends.
Charlie, normally a chap of few words, surprised us all by demonstrating a real talent for sales chat, in French. Boy, did he move a lot of merchandise at the lifeboat stand.
As ever, the coastguards were charming company, and it was nice putting faces to the voices we hear over the radio when out at sea on rescues.
lundi 19 septembre 2011
vendredi 9 septembre 2011
Competitive spirit
The mega-rich know what it takes to get ahead: a ruthless sense of me first! One of them must have been reading my blog, because he (or she) has decided to outdo the view-blocking prowess of the super-yacht "A", by bringing an even bigger one into port, completely filling the horizon. Must be a bugger to park, though...
jeudi 8 septembre 2011
Aperçu mer...
One of the things that intrigue me about French mores is the lack of salesmanship in selling houses. Photos invariably focus upon squalid piles of ironing, or decaying junk in the backyard. A similar insouciance is only too apparent in the accompanying blurbs, where hackneyed phrases succeed one another with dismaying regularity.
Of these feeble formulae, one is regarded as a particular selling point: "aperçu mer", or sea view. Usually one would need a neck with the length of a giraffe's and the 360° flexibility of a common pigeon's to glimpse the pollution-hazed postage stamp of blue, kilometres away behind the concrete jungle.
In our case, however, there is an "aperçu mer" (and indeed an "aperçu montagne"). And what is more, no buildings can be built to block them. But I speak too soon. In the last few days, various, very large objects have blocked the view.
The first is the motoryacht "A" (comes even before "Aardvark", in superyacht listings, geddit?). To give you an idea of scale, that's a full-sized lighthouse in front of it, just below the silvery funnels.
The other is a massive crane, which waddled into position the day before yesterday, in preparation for two years of noise and dust, as they build an underground (underwater?) carpark next to the port, just on the other side of the ramparts.
lundi 29 août 2011
Saturday night and Sunday morning
Well, actually, it all started late on Saturday afternoon. After cleaning duties in the morning with two new recruits, Ben and Alex, then refuelling and port manoeuvre exercises with trainee cox'n Paul at the helm, we had all headed home. The BH and I had just got back from a swim when the beeper sounded. A sailing yacht required assistance some 22 nautical miles offshore. Off we went, corkscrewing unpleasantly in the big, close-packed swell the powerful mistral was sending onto our starboard quarter. It was the turn of the first lifeboatman to be sick over the side.
When we reached the sailing yacht, it was rolling madly in the swell, with sails, sheets and halyards ripped to shreds and over the side, making our approach tricky. There were five people aboard, including two children. There should have been six, we found out, but one man had been washed overboard and had been missing for three and a half hours. The coastguards informed us that he had been found and rescued, miraculously (for he hadn't been wearing a lifejacket) by the helicopter crew from 35F Naval Squadron (that's the view from the helicopter). For once, the name of the boat had been providential, 'Serendipity'. He was lucky to be alive.
We got a line across to the yacht on the third pass, and began the long process of the tow back. Entry into the port, in a high wind, with big waves, and the yacht entangled with sails and rigging, was hairy. To help control the drift, we launched our inflatable into high seas, with waves breaking over our deck and the towrope, hot with tension and friction, flailing only a few inches above our heads.
Once we had secured the other vessel, recovered our inflatable, rewound (by hand) two hundred metres of towrope, and brought back our own boat to its berth and got it ready for the next shout, it was past eleven thirty. We began to disperse. No sooner had I got home for what was now a cold supper than the pager went off again. So once more to sea, this time twelve nautical miles out for another sailing yacht. The wind had by now changed direction, and we were no longer corkscrewing but pounding directly into the breaking crests of the waves. The water, as it came boiling over the boat, whiplashing noisily against the windscreens, was illuminated an unnatural shade of blue by our flashing police lights. It was the turn of another crewman (again not me) to be horribly sick over the side. It was so rough that I was assigned to hold on to him as he puked. As an experienced seafarer, I knew which side not to be on.
The passing of a line and the slow tow back were uneventful, if a little bit like being stuck on a roller coaster for hours. We were back in port at three on Sunday morning.
When we reached the sailing yacht, it was rolling madly in the swell, with sails, sheets and halyards ripped to shreds and over the side, making our approach tricky. There were five people aboard, including two children. There should have been six, we found out, but one man had been washed overboard and had been missing for three and a half hours. The coastguards informed us that he had been found and rescued, miraculously (for he hadn't been wearing a lifejacket) by the helicopter crew from 35F Naval Squadron (that's the view from the helicopter). For once, the name of the boat had been providential, 'Serendipity'. He was lucky to be alive.
We got a line across to the yacht on the third pass, and began the long process of the tow back. Entry into the port, in a high wind, with big waves, and the yacht entangled with sails and rigging, was hairy. To help control the drift, we launched our inflatable into high seas, with waves breaking over our deck and the towrope, hot with tension and friction, flailing only a few inches above our heads.
Once we had secured the other vessel, recovered our inflatable, rewound (by hand) two hundred metres of towrope, and brought back our own boat to its berth and got it ready for the next shout, it was past eleven thirty. We began to disperse. No sooner had I got home for what was now a cold supper than the pager went off again. So once more to sea, this time twelve nautical miles out for another sailing yacht. The wind had by now changed direction, and we were no longer corkscrewing but pounding directly into the breaking crests of the waves. The water, as it came boiling over the boat, whiplashing noisily against the windscreens, was illuminated an unnatural shade of blue by our flashing police lights. It was the turn of another crewman (again not me) to be horribly sick over the side. It was so rough that I was assigned to hold on to him as he puked. As an experienced seafarer, I knew which side not to be on.
The passing of a line and the slow tow back were uneventful, if a little bit like being stuck on a roller coaster for hours. We were back in port at three on Sunday morning.
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