APRIL_______________________________________________________________2005

Friday and Saturday, April 1st and 2nd

<Araksi> During these two days we were busy doing minor repairs on the boat. Ruud fixed the bimini curtains and was busy with the routine tasks of keeping the boat systems running such as cleaning the waste water filters. He is still determined to find the small leakage of sweet water somewhere in the starboard bilge. We often have a small amount of water gathering there. He reduced the possible sources down to the water heater. But he still has to confirm this by closing the small passes from the adjacent compartments to isolate the one with the water heater in it. I did some sowing, cooking, writing and reading. Today we also called our friends in Rome. Our initial plans were to visit them before leaving Alghero. But there has been some changes in our plans; Ruud will be away for a week. We look forward to meet them on some other occasion, hopefully soon.

Tuesday, April 5th

<Araksi> Ruud left for a short week this morning. When I was on my way to the town I stood by the fishing boats on the public quai and watched the fishermen unloading their catch of the day. I always take great pleasure watching these men who for me are synonymous for hard maritime work, struggle with the elements and the reward; the prey. While I was standing there immersed in this maritime atmosphere, I noticed one of the fishermen filling the bag of an old lady with a lot of fish. I approached them and shyly asked if I also could buy a bit of the catch. He nodded and went away; in a couple of minutes he was back again with a sack full of fresh glittering fish, and to my surprise he wouldn't´t accept any payment. I was happy as a small girl who had just been given a bag full of candies. Before continuing into the town I went back to the boat to put the fish in the fridge while I was regretting that Ruud, Helga and René were gone; three more souls who would help me easily minimize the quantity of marine richness I now had in my fridge. The good part of it is that in the next days I don´t need to go shopping for food.

Wednesday, April 6th

<Araksi> My plan today was to download our homepage on to the net. The internet café I used a couple of times with René was closed -technical problems, that´s what they said. This put me on the search for another one where I could use my USB-stick, this is not as obvious as it seems to be, and as I feared it turned out to be a difficult undertaking. Most of them wouldn't let me use their USB port. After searching and asking for about an hour, I finally found one where I could download our homepage from the USB stick on to the Net. In an hour I had our homepage on our domain and on the screen, except that a couple of buttons were not triggering the desired effect, such as hitting the log button wasn't displaying our dairy and the themes button seemed to strike its purpose namely to display the link to the page which tells about hibernating in Alghero. I remembered René mentioning that these programs are sensitive to capital letters and lower case letters. This was the point I wanted to focus on. But I had enough of internet café's for today, that could wait for tomorrow. Late in the afternoon, I tried to enjoy, alone, my dinner. And guess what, I had fish for dinner. Freshly fried fish with fresh salad with roccula leafs in it.

Thursday and Friday, April 7th and 8th

<Araksi> I am preparing the boat for our departure. The weather is unstable but I am eager to leave as soon as Ruud comes back. I also worked on solving the problem of our homepage, but I made things even worse. And I am still having fish for dinner.

Saturday and Sunday, April 9th and 10th

<Araksi> Ruud arrived on Saturday morning. The weather is getting worse; it seems that we have to wait for couple of days before we can leave. For dinner I served my beloved husband as a welcome dish a delicious fish terrine.

Monday, April 11th

<Araksi> Today I could finally install our homepage on to the Net in our new domain. The weather is still very unstable. And Ruud is showing signs of getting a cold.

Tuesday, April 12th

<Araksi> Yes, Ruud has a cold. He woke up with a sour throat and a headache. So, I sent him back to bed; no way his illness is going to delay our departure!

Wednesday, April 13th

<Araksi> We decided to leave tomorrow. Today, I took advantage of still being in Alghero and went to the Wednesday market accompanied by Ruud. I like being there, lingering around and buying local products.

Thursday, April 14th

<Araksi> Yippee, we are sailing!!! Today is the beginning of our new sailing season and we both love it! At 09:00 we were at the fuel station and at 09:10 we let the lines go and headed to the sea. Out there the condition was not very favorable, but who cares; we were heading South with southerly winds. That meant tagging, with true winds around 13 kts. Our speed was mostly around 8 kts. We were enjoying it. Garabes behaves hilariously under sail. Then, around noon time the wind dropped to 4 kts. We started motoring, and that unfortunately until we dropped anchor at 19:45 in the bay of Oristano (039°52.3'N 008°26.6'E); we had covered 54 miles. A lousy average, but that´s the Med; you can't count on the winds and you can hardly estimate your arrival time. By now, we usually use an average of 5 kts while calculating our approximate arrival. Our first night at anchor was marvelous. Under the bright sky and on the rocking sea we lay to sleep in the bosom of nature.

<Ruud> I tested my self-made lures today, and they seem to behave well up to a speed of 6 kts. Then, however, they all start to jump erratically out of the water. Well, I need some more research to do. The first obligatory gift to the sea gods was also given: I lost one of my favorite lures for some unknown reason. It had got us eight nice tunas last year. We demand big fish in return for that gift, hear ye watery creatures!

Friday, April 15th

<Ruud> We left the anchorage at 07:00 with decent winds of 14kts on our port quarter, which gave us a speed of around 7 kts. At 08:40 the wind had picked up to 26 kts, so we decided to put a reef on the main and one on the genoa. We had hardly sailed for a quarter of an hour when the wind died out to 2 kts so suddenly as it had picked up. So we took the reef out and continued down the western coast of Sardinia, sometimes sailing, and sometimes motoring . We had a visitor; a pigeon, who - most probably being blown out to the sea by the heavy early morning winds - found comfort on Garabes.

<Araksi> We arrived in Carloforte (039°08.5'N 008°19'E) at 15:15. This small town is located on the island of Isola Di San Pietro, on the southwest coast of Sardinia. Our arrival was not only crowned by finding here the possibility of mooring along a very nice waterfront of a very lovely town, but also by finding a lovely dark blue boat moored there: the Vagebond with her crew Helga and René. The reunion, flavored with a very pleasant dinner on Vagebond, ended our long, tiring but all in all gorgeous sailing day.

Saturday, April 16th

<Araksi> Eager to explore the early morning face of the small town and with the prospect of finding a bakery to buy fresh rolls for breakfast, I already was up at 07:00. I greatly enjoy experiencing the unconsumed atmosphere of a new day; its freshness is a satisfying reward for leaving the cuddling warmth of ones bed.

During the day I updated our web site, tidied up the boat, while Ruud was busy in the engine room. Together with Tom, he revisioned the two engines and cleaned the two Eberspächer heaters, which were clogged up because of their heavy use during the unusually cold winter this year. Tom was a former chief mechanic at the famous Dutch Jongert shipyard, and is now cruising together with his wife Carine on their beautiful old Dutch fishing 'Botter' Alcatraz, completely renovated by himself.

Late in the evening the low weather system which was troubling South of France two days ago arrived at our doorstep with lightning and heavy showers.

Sunday, April 17th

<Araksi> Horrible weather! The weather charts seem to display only low pressure systems marching into the Mediterranean.

Monday and Tuesday, April 18th and 19th

<Araksi> On Monday morning we made a small walk around the town and to the adjacent salinas. That was enough to let us retire for the rest of the day; we both are still struggling with a flu. On Tuesday we made arrangement for lifting out Garabes in Hammamet, Tunisia.

Wednesday, April 20th

<Araksi> Vagebond left today, we are scheduled for tomorrow. We feel much better and eager to go, and there is also a weather window with northwesterly. Today is the market day in Carloforte. A market is always a good opportunity to fill up the fridge with fresh fruit and vegetables.

Thursday and Friday, April 21st and 22nd

<Araksi> After a good breakfast we left at 10:30. We had winds from the Northwest; between 15 and 17 kts, and 137 miles to cover. Tunisia being the land to reach, the wind was gently pushing Garabes on her starboard quarter towards her destination. Even though the wind was not strong enough for a reef, we decided to put one on the main, for the state of sea was a bit agitated with steep waves of 1.5 meters. The reef caused a smoother motion and we were still doing around 6.5 kts.

<Ruud> Dolphins - the first of the season - are encircling our boat. Normally they stay for an hour or so, but this time they keep on accompanying us throughout the night. So they became good entertainment during the long, lonely watches, the light of the almost full moon falling on their shiny bodies when jumping high out of the water. The wind has meanwhile calmed down and it is back to the normal Mediterranean routine: motoring. Luckily, we are not far from the Tunisian coast anymore, the hills already clearly visible in the early morning sun. We hoisted the courtesy flag which René and I had produced in Alghero. It is the print of a flag which is sealed within a plastic protective cover. Around 13:00 we finally brought Garabes to a rest along a pontoon in Bizerte (037°16.9'N; 009°53.5'E), our first Tunisian port. Entry formalities are simple: three custom officers entered our boat, and their only concern seemed to be if we had any weapons on board. We had a friendly chat and filled in a lot of papers, all in all the simplest entry in a foreign country ever.

Bizerte is a less touristic town: the harbor looks like a big oil terminal, the old fishing harbor further away is very picturesque and the Medina, the old city apparently built by the Turks, is some how appealing with its narrow streets and white houses, some of them with those famous Tunisian beautifully ornamented blue doors. Not being a tourist center the town gives a more authentic impression of daily life: a busy market (with only few of the souvenir shops), prayer time (it is a Friday), school children, youth having fun, etc.

Saturday, April 23rd

<Araksi> Today, we have a 40 miles sailing to accomplish. Our destination is Sidi Bou Said (036°51.8'N; 010°21'E). At the end we will have sailed 50 miles. The direction of the wind was not very favorable but we still decided to go. Half of the trip was enjoyable, with a lot of tagging though, the other half was nerve-racking; close to the wind with winds over 30 kts. Sorry for this, René: the self made courtesy flag didn't stand its first test of strong winds as a piece of it broke off. As the weather was getting more brutal we started to worry whether we could enter the harbor in Sidi Bou Said, so we called a person named Houssein who was recommended to us by a good friend. We wanted to know if it would be safe to approach the harbor under this conditions. He warned us of a shallow located on the starboard side of the entrance. So while entering the harbor one should give this spot a wide berth -this is also mentioned in Rod Heikell's guide. When we finally arrived there the scene was not encouraging at all; waves were furiously crashing on to the beach, which lays not far from the entrance, and they were also crashing on to the shallow. Ruud started with the approach by motoring directly towards the shore (a big hotel complex on the hill is a good point of orientation, we were told). I was horrified and thought we were going to crash onto the beach, for the surf was gliding Garabes towards the shore. Ruud was calm and he had the boat well under control. When we were in the height of the entrance he turned the boat 90°, which dangerously exposed her entire starboard side to the breaking waves, and sure enough a big one crushed on to it throwing her off the track. Ruud accelerated the engines and headed rapidly in to the entrance keeping close to the port side along the fuel station. Does it sound horrifying? It was. We were directed to moor along a quai, which was not far from the entrance, and situated on the weather side, while the winds were still from the SE and over 30 kts. Thus quite a bumpy spot that was kept free for battered Garabes and her crew. But again, anything was better than the conditions outside. After the mooring work was done we collapsed into the sofa, feeling our bodies eventually starting to relax. It actually was the Manhattan that gave the ultimate comfort! Thanks for the recipe, Ed! (for all the others: Manhattan = 1 measure of bourbon to 3 measures of red martini, 3 drops of Angostura -it is a bitter- and a Maraschino cherry).

Sunday, April 24rd

<Araksi> The night was rough but we were too tired to take notice of it. In the morning, while waiting for Houssein, Ruud washed off the salt from Garabes, I ran the washing machine and tidied up the boat. In the afternoon we visited the town. It really looks like a stage set, unreal and beautiful with its narrow streets, white houses, blues doors and window screens.

Being very close to Tunis, it is the domicile for the rich and powerful of the country, nestled on the top of a hill looking down onto the harbor. Close to the marina a winding stairway leads to the town. Once up there one is marveled by the beauty of form and color. We were told that in summer this harmony of the colors blue, white and green is enriched with a bright mauve; bougainvillea I suppose. In the late afternoon the wind picked up again and reached its former strength; 30 to 35 kts. We managed to find some more bumper stuff from the locals to tie to the side of the quai, such as two car tires and some additional fenders.

Monday, April 25th

<Araksi> The weather has finally calmed down. At the end of these last stormy days two of our new fender covers were torn off. Something we did not manage to achieve during the whole winter! Still, we are happy that Garabes didn't have any serious damage.

Our plan for today is to visit Tunis. We want to see the Medina, the historic town, and of course to find an internet café for updating our homepage. One has to either take a taxi or walk to the town and take the train from the main station; it runs every 15 to 20 minutes. A Tunisian marinero gave us a lift to the station, and from there we took the train. Within 30 minutes one arrives in the center of the town, on the avenue Habib Bourguiba, which has internet cafés, bookstores where one can find books in various languages (El Kitap, No 43) and restaurants. The Medina is at the end of this large avenue. We first marched to an internet café. As you may guess, my business was to update the homepage, but alas the connection speed dictated the success of my project, and that was not speedy enough to even access our web-hoste. But we were successful with our next project, and that was to buy a cellular phone card, with a local phone number. We usually buy these cards in those countries where we plan to stay at least a month. In Italy we could even access the internet via our cellular phones (GPRS), that was a luxury. Once we were done with our projects, we mutated into good tourists by visiting the Medina. After lingering in this narrow, winding labyrinth for three hours we found rest in a nice picturesque restaurant where we lavished our first Tunisian specialties: brik (fried tortillas stuffed with tuna, vegetables and an egg) and couscous.

We arrived at 23:00 in Sidi Bou Said train station, and had the perfect digestion walk down the hill to the marina.

Tuesday, April 26th

<Araksi> By the time we arrived in Kelibia at 18:30, we had accomplished 55 miles in 9 hours. We had northerlies all the way long; stronger in the first two hours (15 - 20 kts), then by noon it gradually decreased to 13 to 14kts. We motor sailed the last 20 miles.

The harbor of Kelibia (26°50'N 11°06.6'E) is mainly occupied by fisher boats. Being a port of entry you see also sailing boats squeezed in some corners, and mostly tied up in two or three rows. Our row had four boats, Garabes being the last one. We enjoyed this somehow different atmosphere than in a marina; being in the middle of a busy, mid-size fisher port you feel that you are not the point of focus as in a marina, and that you are on your own to find one of those scare spots to moor. This increases the solidarity between the sailors, who are readily prepared to offer a berth along their boats, and to give even more eagerly a hand.

At our arrival we were again boarded by Tunisian officials. The procedures of the country dictate to report one's arrival and departure at every port. At least most of them are very friendly.

<Ruud> Kelibia is a major fishing port according to Tunisian standards, the pontoons are full of nets and other fishing equipment, and everywhere is a coming and going of trawlers and smaller fishing boats. Fish is unloaded and immediately put on ice and transported away. On the dry, many boats are being repaired (most vessels look indeed very battered): big chunks of wood are just axed away, new pieces are hammered on the sides. The harbor is dirty with a lot of plastic bottles floating around in a thick layer of oil and the smell wouldn't win a price for the best perfume either, but we like it (for a day or two); it looks real and it is indeed a change to the sterile atmosphere of most marinas.

It is a pity that the coastline makes it difficult to anchor: almost no bays and although it looks like the beaches are mostly sand, nasty hidden rocks require much attention.

Wednesday, April 27th

<Araksi> We motored almost the entire 45 miles trip to Hammamet. The marina complex of port Yasmine Hammamet (36° 22,3'N; 10° 32,8'E) is big, and has a big enough lift to haul out Garabes. We need to change a rubber seal ring on our Volvo saildrive.

Thursday, April 28th

<Araksi> Adel is a mechanic recommended by Houssein in Sidi Bou Said, at our arrival yesterday we called him and made an appointment to meet him this morning. He will help us in fixing the boat. But first we have to find the Volvo spare part. In Italy we relied on information about boat repair in Tunisia as being uncomplicated and good. As we were on our way to Tunisia however, we started to hear from sailors discouraging news about finding spare parts; it apparently takes ages, and especially the Volvo dealer seems to have a bad reputation. Ruud sorted out an arrangement with the yard for the entire work to be done and for supplying the parts. I hope to have a positive experience.

During midday we went to the actual town of Hammamet, it is 10 km away from the Marina and the entire tourist complex here (Yasmine Hammamet). We were on the search for an internet café and a car rental agency. Internet connection is very slow, we have difficulties in downloading our web site.

We had dinner in a nice restaurant in the Medina to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Most of the towns in Tunisia have a Medina which is the original old core surrounded by a protection wall. And if they don't have one as here in the sea resort of Hammamet then they built one as a tourist attraction. It is more a stage set-up than an authentic town, very unreal. But we liked it, they did a good job.

Friday, April 29th

<Ruud> We hauled out Garabes. It was a tricky maneuver as the wind was blowing hard and the workers at the yard seemed not very experienced in handling a catamaran. The bassin was very narrow, Araksi was not on board to guide me, and the workers seemed not to care. The result was a few scratches on the gel coat, luckily easy to repair. Garabes was pressure washed, and is now drying in the sun.

Saturday, April 30th

<Araksi> Working on Garabes: bilges were cleaned, the deck was scrubbed, water pipes were rinsed, and much more.

Boat = Never-Ending-Work.