So, back to port Yasmine Hammamet, our current ‘home’ port. Easy living, great weather and nice people. During our short time away from the boat, the temperature in Yasmine went crazy. People were complaining that it was 42+ and their pants were on fire. So jump in the sea ya muppets! Inside our boat it must have been in the 50’s. Shame we didn’t have a max/min thermometer so we would know exactly but the damage soon became apparent. I’m not talking about all that red wine that has been super heated or the canned food that has expanded but not exploded.
The 12volt fridge makes all the right noises but refuses to get cold? It was working fine before, though a little lazy. Finally got a man to come and check it and he said it had no gas inside the compressor thingy. He takes it away, solders up the joints and returns it back into the space it lives in. There then follows a lot of head scratching and inactivity, it will not run anymore? In typical Tunisian fashion he has forgotten how it was wired up. Six wires, eight options. He goes away and I have another look at it. Finally reduced the options to two wires and four possible places, then one wire in three. Bingo! Easy when you know how...or not. The guy then had to come back and fill it with gas (r134a) and now it works like new, hurrah!! Cost the princely sum of 50 dinar including a spare can of the gas. (25 quid)
The other major problem was not so cheap. Our ‘gray’ water pump that chucks all the sink and shower waste out into the ocean was having serious organ failure. It was puffing and wheezing but not much stink water was leaving the tank, bugger. Having taken the horrible smelly pump apart and investigated the reason for its demise, one of the valves had split and would no longer seal correctly. Can I get another? In Tunisia? NO! I trawled around the mucky back streets of Tunis, poking my smelly pump part under the noses of several would-be plumbing outlets, to no avail. This episode was made worse by having the heavens open up and dump about an inch of rain in 30 seconds, the subsequent flood and discharge from the drains made my already tested patience expire.
I returned to a previously rejected shop that had a new, complete, all singing, all dancing, ‘Jabsco Water Puppy’. Having reluctantly resigned myself to purchasing the said new pump, 345 dinar was the asking price,( divide by two for pounds) I made it back to the shop to find it closed due to flooding! Can it get any worse I thought, standing in 3 inches of rising sewer water, peering through the bars of the darkened shop front?
My sobs of desperation were silenced when I noticed the tightly wrapped shop assistant standing in the doorway, waiting for a gap in the torrent so she could scarper. I explained my predicament to her in a mixture of Arabic, French, hand gestures and pitiful facial expressions. It was enough, she took me in a side door, past all the other staff trying to stop the incessant roof leaks ruining the remaining stock where I duly gave away all my recently withdrawn cash and got no receipt.
The new ‘Puppy’ was mine! I could have got three sheep for the price of one puppy but I had to move on and sod the expense. My troubles were not over. Oh No. My yacht’s water outlet pipe was an inch and a quarter and the pump outlet was half inch BSP. Not a problem I thought, just go back to my friendly plumber on the corner and he’ll sort out the adapters so it screws into the pump ½ inch and finishes at 1 1/4inch. The plumber was not having a good day. His roof leaked worse than the last shop but his stock was either made of iron or electrical, neither of which enjoys moisture. The boys were running around moving stuff and frantically pushing the floodwater out into the street that was now a large, tidal river. If only my pump was self powered....
I returned the following day, positive and refreshed, to Tunis, this in itself no easy task. Ten minutes on the bus to the Luage (VW Transporter or similar), 50 min on the suicidal motorway to the terminal in Tunis, then another ten minute walk along the minefield that is the pavement, to the plumbers. He was shut. It’s bloody Saturday for Christ’s sake! Sorry, Mohammed’s sake!!!! I crossed the road to another friendly purveyor of fine water management fixtures who, after trying every similar shop in the block, took me to a man in a cave. Having entered the black whole of Tunis and given my eyes time to adjust to the oily gloom, I became aware of a lathe being operated by a gorilla. It was explained to the machine operator by my new found friend that I required enough material removed from the metric fitting supplied, that it would then fit snugly into the sample of imperial pipe I had bought with me. Simple really. Another 15 dinar for 20 min of his skill with a vernier and off we went. My guide would not take a penny and even paid for the much needed coffee, despite my protestation. All I had to do now was assemble the multitude of adaptors with 14 miles of PTFE tape and see how well the Heath Robinson Contraption preformed. It Leaked. I started again. It leaked less. Bugger it! I had other things that needed fixing......
The clock was ticking and I was getting impatient to go sailing. As normal, the weather window was slammed in my/our face/s and we were left the option of staying put and going to a 40/60 birthday party at the pub or sailing in rough seas and 25 knots of wind??
You might think that the first option would be the better one, but consider this: staying in the pub till four in the morning, drinking bottles of strong Lager and dancing our arses off is not conducive to clear headed skippering at 8am. I drank six bottles of beer and left at ten thirty. Professionalism personified!
The following morning I delegated the bureaucratic obstacles of Police, Customs and Marina checkout to Gay. It can save at least an hour of valuable downwind sailing time by sending a member of the fairer sex into the sexually starved annuls of Tunisian Departure Inc. They love paperwork and only speak French and Arabic so my Python-derived humour techniques are lost on them and can make for awkward situations.
8.15am we were free of Africa! Only another 190 miles of open water between us and Malta, a forecast of 15-25kn NW wind should see us there by lunchtime on Sunday, sadly too late to watch the Moto GP in the pub but at least arriving in daylight.
First sighting of Dolphins was about 10.30am. I saw a pod of about five playing around just off the bow. Gay was asleep in the saloon and I was not sure that waking her was worthwhile, they always disappear soon after. They did.
This is a Mexican Lion. A dog shaved to great effect.
After 28 hours of rough going we arrived battered and bruised in Gozo, the boat in its usual post smack-head burglary condition. As expected the Customs guy was very helpful and made our arrival a pleasure rather than a pain. This year the sea is full of huge jelly fish the size of dinner plates!! They don’t sting allegedly but are quite intimidating when you are swimming round them.
Gay will be doing her PADI Open Water diver course and I will be doing some exploring of Second World War planes and boats on the sea bed. More news when we have it....
Mgarr Harbour, Gozo.
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