Wednesday 29^th April – Kalibia, Tunisia

36:50.023N 11:06.766E

We were up before twilight and had breakfast so that we could set off at first light so we could see any fishing pots – we had a long way to go. We left at around 5am (local time) and the wind was quiet for the first time in days.

Our friends on Enya set off two hours earlier as they are a little slower than us and have a long keel boat that can handle fishing pots easily by gliding over them. We saw them leave and shortly after the wind built up a bit so we did wonder whether it would be a good day to passage; the wind then fell away again.

We left the harbour and decided to use the lack of wind to motor swiftly on and bank some miles. We did take a slight detour to look at the wreck of a rusty old tanker aground on the beach in the bay – actually, it was a mistake as the autohelm hadn't tracked correctly and we were in fact on our way to joining that wreck; fortunately we soon noticed that we were going the wrong way!

We motored on for 8 miles to the first cape and as we rounded it the wind started to build behind us. The swell was still quite lumpy after the strong winds of the last few days and so we tried to run with the wind using both sails with the mail-sail held with a gybe preventer; however we eventually defaulted to our usual set-up and took the main in and ran down on the full genoa only.

We decided that to make the distance in daylight we would need to motor on if the speed over the ground dipped below 5.5 knots. We only had to do this twice, once for 30 minutes and the second time for 10 minutes, each during the first few hours. The wind then built up to F5-6 and we held between 5.5 and 7 knots the whole way across to Cap Bon, a cracking sail. Certainly not the reducing forecast expected!

Once we rounded Cap Bon the wind eased a little and our speed reduced to around 5.5 knots. We were happy to continue like this for a while but then as our speed dropped further we finally motored for the last hour to re-charge the batteries and ours as we were getting tired.

This evening we are in a small fishing harbour where there is one pontoon allocated for visitors and we are rafted three deep.

Enya arrived about an hour after us as the sun was setting and are rafted three deep behind us. We have both elected for an early night.