Floating on eggshells

Peregrinus had four heaters: two electric; built into the forward cabin and the salon's air conditioning units; one reverse-heating, in the aft cabin; and a portable ceramic 2000-watt.  These four are enormously inefficient, because the generator must be run to power these units, unless the boat is at dock.  So we just got a real fifth heater installed: an Eberspächer Airtronic D5, burning diesel as heating fuel, and sipping low voltage from the boat's batteries to power its spark, fan, and electronics.  This should keep all of Peregrinus toasty even on the coldest days, using surprisingly little fuel, and no generator.

Frédéric Quintard had to make a hole in the hull, about a meter above the waterline, for the heater's combustion exhaust, and he gave us the cutout.

1¢ U.S. dollar and 1¢ Euro and the hull cutout.  The hull is thicker at the waterline and below, and fibreglass is a hardy material, but it is still unnerving to contemplate what separates one from the great blue out there.  Leica Typ 114, 10 July 2015.

Coffee bar

The green Pixie coffee maker pours its daily lungo shots on Peregrinus each morning.  Tired of Nespresso's absurd U.S. markup on capsules that we've been paying for years, we had been looking forward to the European copycats, which are commonplace.  In Ireland we got a few nice local roasts, but it is in France that the experience has bloomed.  Carrefour's house brand by itself has no less than 12 varieties, and it carries three or four other brands as well.

It was a surprise to find these single-farm capsules, from Finca La Nueva (a property with which we were unacquainted), from the «Cordillère d'Apaneca», located «a l'ouest du Salvador».  The value-added chain remains, as usual, completely foreign: «Torrefié et conditionné en France».

The coffee maker and the milk frother sit on an ingenious platform built by Michael in Fort Lauderdale.  No glue, no screws, it holds the devices in place no matter what the seas, yet each half of it can be lifted, leaving no trace in the furniture of Peregrinus.  Leica Typ 114, 16 July 2015

Festival International du Film de la Rochelle

So far, we have watched Feuillade's Vendémiaire (1918), and four of his shorts, from 1908 to 1918.  One of the shorts featured actress Musidora as a character reading the book Vampires that the short itself launched into the best seller list and shortly afterwards resulted in Musidora playing femme fatale Irma Vep in seven of the ten blockbuster movies Les Vampires.  Goes to show movie-book cross-promos and long series of sequels are old, old business.   Another short, Bout de Zan vole un éléphant (1913), featured the endearing, irrepressible child character Bout de Zan's zany town adventures with an actual elephant.  All of these silent films were presented in La Rochelle as they would have been a century ago: with live music performances, suited to each film.  

We also watched Mackendrick's Sweet Smell of Success (1957), with Tony Curtis, Burt Lancaster, and Susan Harrison.

The La Rochelle waterfront from inside the walls.  A La Plancha is a full restaurant ingeniously built on a small fishing boat.  iPhone 4S, 9:20 pm, 29 June 2015.