2023-06-05 Still in the Saintes

Early Morning

I’m still in the Saintes – it is nice here (and I paid for a week’s anchorage).

I was at my seat in the virtual office by 05:30 and am glad that I did start early as I’d made some changes which resulted in the pre-production system to have some serious errors. It took while to locate the root cause. It was a typical software issue – I’d done a greater than / less than comparison of two numbers; but as a string rather than using the numerical values. This means that “20” is greater than “199999999” – not a good thing in the circumstances.

Morning

The strong winds have passed with the frontal boundary and today the anchorage is calm. Since it is already June, the sun is hot and without wind can get sticky belowdecks. I’ve got my fan running, which helps a lot. 

Noon

I’ve started some long-running jobs at work, so I’m going to take a break before returning to the office. I think it is time to get the dive gear out and give the rudder, prop and keel a good cleaning. I’ve only got one  full tank left, so it has to last. I’ll start with the keel and rudder, as I can’t get to those very well when snorkelling, then the prop shaft and then a run up and down the length of the hull.

It is mid-afternoon now, and I haven’t gone swimming, or diving. I’m still working remotely. For the past hour I’ve been almost finished, but for every step forward I go back a step as well so I’m not getting any closure.

Afternoon

I rummaged around my camera equipment locker and found an old GoPro 3 (from 2014) and plugged it in to charge. The battery was empty after all those years. But it did take a charge and after about an hour I reconfigured it and went for a swim with it. The pictures below show a dismal scenario. Despite days of scrubbing the hull looks rather dismal in those areas I’ve scraped. The untouched regions look even worse. This growth is one reason I’m still in the Saintes…