Saint Pierre

11^th to 18^th June 2019

Lovely little town. The museum in the middle has re-opened after the building work and while small, is good (and has bi-lingual information, for the most part, which makes it easier for us!). we did some more starfish hunting, though there seemed to be fewer than on our previous visit.

I was busy with work for the first couple of days. So when another boat-family (who we had spoken to briefly at the dinghy dock in Isle de Saints) came over to invite us to the beach, Charlie and the bigger boys went with them – on their dinghy, to save kayaking as we are not using the outboard/dinghy at present. Arthur learnt some new dam building skills from older boys, Theo got time to himself on the beach (a rarity) and Charlie chatted while I worked away on my laptop with Hector asleep on my knee. Not a bad way to work, I must admit.

Practiced my free diving cleaning the bottom of the boat – a combination of a fairly substantial scraper (which takes off barnacles easily and removes the larger beasties and plants – they can’t attach properly because of the coppercoat) and a stainless-steel dish scrubber to get the finer stuff off work well. The scrubber will, hopefully, also expose a bit more of the copper and reduce the rate of growth build-up. The bottom should have turned green by now due to the copper oxidising – it hasn’t, which suggests the bottom wasn’t sanded thoroughly enough by the yard before launching. We’ll dry out at some point and get the electric sander out at some point to freshen it up, but for now cleaning isn’t too arduous.

Theo is training himself to swim – holding onto the swim ladder doing “the trick where I nearly sink”, then swimming from the ladder to the noodles we use as a ‘swim zone’. He’s getting better and can manage half a meter or so, which is scary. Soon there’ll be two of them zooming around the boat. We need more eyes, or a clone or two…

Arthur got stung by a jellyfish or five while he was swimming – enough to leave him screaming in the water until I pulled him out, in any case. He doesn’t often scream or shout when hurt so we knew it was pretty bad, and the stings were swelling up like welts or burns by the time he was back in the cockpit – there was enough venom in them to have me stung just from hugging him on the way! We washed him off, rinsed liberally with vinegar, and then with some sting relief cream (after checking for any lingering tentacles) and he was as good as new by the time his “engineering compilation” crash course for kid’s video had finished. As he said himself, he heals quickly. We’re pretty sure it was a sea-wasp jelly, as I had seen a few in the water the day before and we googled to identify them afterwards. Anyway, he didn’t fancy swimming again that day, and fortunately we were moving on the following day so can get him back in the water somewhere else!