After last night’s singing session (why have I been singing California Dreamin’ in my head all morning?), there were slow risings on many of the boats in port, followed by many departures, as is characteristic of Wednesday mornings in Damazan.

Later that morning, I got onto the internet to sort out some funds transfers with OFX since I realised that my payment to Lacen might not have gone through, and I also saw that our own Credit Agricole account was running dangerously low.

We threw off the ropes and departed in late morning to cruise from Damazan to Villeton. We expected to pass l’Escapade along the way as they were heading to lunch at the Belgium Cafe at St Christophe’s ecluse. However, they weren’t there, and on arriving in Villeton we saw them moored in port, with about 19m of quai space in front of them. So being 17m long, we figured we had plenty of space, and snuggled into the gap with room to spare. We then found that they were on the point of departure, as they were just in the process of saying goodbye to Rick and Bob (the singers) when we arrived, but had decided to wait a while and see how we managed with the minimal space available. After watching us pass the test, they then departed on their way west.

We were walking around the port, when we bumped into Roger from Highlander. Since it was a hot day, Mary had decided to stay inside the barge, and so Rita suggested that I have a few beers in the port bar with Roger, while she cycled back to Damazan for a swim. I readily agreed.

As I walked back to the barge, I noticed that we were moored behind Vague-a-Bond, which we had seen in Villeton a couple of times in recent years. This is the boat of Larry Doff who infamously navigated the Mascaret in her a few years ago. We later learned that Larry was leaving the boat with the people at Villeton, for their young bar staff to have a place to live over summer, in return for keeping an eye on the boat and doing basic maintenance.

As the sun set over Villeton, Rita and I searched for the nearest gravelled area to continue the Petanque Challenge. We eventually ended up in the Mairie carpark, where I took the honours 11-4 to go 3-2 up in the series.

As we sat on the rear deck after dinner, we noticed a lightning storm developing in the east over Buzet. As it was now quite dark, I decided to try getting some photos, but found it quite difficult coordinating the lightning flash with my finger on the shutter button. As a result, most of my photos were black (i.e. I photographed the sky after the lightning had finished!). This is the best of the non-black shots I got (by pure chance).

However, I remembered that the iPhone 7 has an interesting setting whereby you can take “live” photos. It does this by automatically shooting a small video of 1.5 seconds before you click the shutter button and 1.5 seconds after you click the button, thus giving a 3-second video centred on when you click the button. This is ideal for lightning photos, since you just click the button as soon as you see the flash, and it then captures the lead-up to when you click and the aftermath. This is now what you see.