Pentecost 2011

In between our April training courses and coming back in August to put it all into practice, we received an unusual request from Iain Noble:

"We have a favour to ask of you; we have had the Mayor of Moissac contact us today and he is in need of a boat this Monday for the Fete de Pentecote, to take some people on to the river. It's the old sailors - they put flowers on the Tarn to remember the old chaps that have died. We are trying to get a few boats together for him as the boat that normally does it cannot cruise, so was wondering would you mind if we used Kanumbra? "

Since this seemed like a good local community event to support, we agreed on the proviso that we got some photos of the day. The following are a selection of what we received.

Little did we realise at the time that we were getting involved in an inter-town rivalry between Moissac and Castelsarassin (as the following Google translation of a local newspaper article explained a few days later)!  But at least it was nice to know that we were the "sailors who came to the aid of the Mayor of Moissac and that the tradition of the procession of Pentecost continues", even if they did get our nationality wrong!

We were most pleased when we arrived in Moissac in July to find that the Mayor had left a little gift for us!

We look forward to helping out again in 2012, if asked.