Miss you Dad, wish you were here.

Overnight we had the first rain since we got here accompanied by some half hearted thunder and lightning with a welcome drop in temperatures. Mid morning it dried up and with temps in a more comfortable mid 20’s rather than mid 30’s so we headed off to the 400 year celebration of the French Navy with a resolve not to mention the battles of the Nile or Trafalgar and very definitely not the tragedy of Mers-el-Kébir.

It was really a promo and recruiting event for Marine Nationale affectionately nicknamed La Royale which is odd considering what Robespierre and his mob did to the French Royales. Madame Guillotine and all that.

But for me there was a standout highlight. When my dad who survived the Japanese railway of death in Thailand was diagnosed with aggressive rheumatoid arthritis in his early forties with a prognosis of wheelchair by mid 50s he didn’t throw the towel in. He did what he always did and fought it every foot if the way. When he retired at 65, having not missed a day off work and not a wheelchair in sight he decided on a strategy to keep his by then grossly swollen and painful hand joints working, he would build intricate and detailed model ships, wooden sailing ships with planked hulls and spider web rigging. He built dozens and most of them are in our house having moved from Cheshire to Hampshire, London, Florida and now Wales. They have inevitably had a few knocks along the way and I’m working on getting them back to a condition he would be proud of and discovering what a challenge that is regardless of ability/ disability.

His favorite and mine is not the most complex, it is just - well “right”. An old salt once told me if a boat looks right, it probably is and there in front of me at Brest fête la Marine is L'Étoile, a 38m wooden topsaily schooner (goélette à hunier) belonging to the French Navy. Built in 1932 in Fécamp. She is an active historic training vessel used to teach young sailors the fundamentals of seamanship and navigation and is an exact replica of the goélettes de Paimpol, the historic 19th-century vessels that fished for cod in the treacherous Arctic North Atlantic.

I would have done this whole trip just to see this boat but there are moments when no matter your age you are just a little boy who misses his Dad