Maxime dear: steering the boat in the pelting rain, so no one else has to

Natalya spent a lot of time with her adventurous first client. Actually, there were two Russian women, each with a teenage child. The fathers were to catch up with them later in the trip. So these clients had already flown an airplane over the patchwork fields of Normandy (with Natalya in tow), and they asked Natalya if she could continue their Normandy adventures with a day on the seas in an a little, old-fashioned sailboat.

Sure, no problem.

Now these clients had got on so well with Natalya already, for going on two weeks, that one of them proposed: "Why don't you bring your two boys, too?" And so Natalya did.

The boat was a lovely little thing, and it came with two iconic Norman fisherman. So out they sail. It was a beautiful day, but on the return to port, a storm was clearly coming up on them.

The two fishermen didn't give themselves much chance to beat the storm to the harbor. And they were right.

The rain came down in torrents, with the sort of raindrops that hurt your shoulders.

As quickly as they could, the two sailors took down one of the sails, and got everybody huddled together next to a chest, and then covered them all with the sail. Gabriel was put in the middle, and they covered him with anything they could find, which amounted to enough because in the end the only thing visible of him was his nose.

Natalya said that they were under there, with the cacaphony of noise from the rain hammering the sail about their ears, when she realized Maxime was not bunched in there with all of them. She poked here head out, and there he was, at the helm, steering the boat.

The sailors were telling him to get inside, and cover himself, but he refused, because he could see that both sailors were trying to get the other sails down, and it would be much better if they could concentrate on that.

So there he stood, with nary a peep out of him. Through the storm, he declined to move from this station, despite appeals to reason from the fisherman, family and clients alike.

When the storm passed, he took off his hood, and wiped his glasses free of water. But he would have done just as well to wring himself out, as he was totally soaked through, top and bottom, tennis shoes and all.

The boat is the green one, with the red sail.

The kiddies

Maxime as he first takes the helm, putting out to sea

An early hint of the storm to come

Another sailboat passing by on the English Channel

The sea began to turn rough, and one of the sailors took little Gabriel under his protection.

The boy of one of the clients was not up to standing anymore

Maxime after the storm was over, and Natalya emerged from her tarp cave to take this photo

Cold, wet - but happy