37.16.422N 9.52.817E

On Wednesday we took it easy after our day out in Tunis; we did some more washing and changed an impellor in a pump that had finally failed.

We decided to finally sort out the “beer challenge”. We dragged Lorraine along with us confident her French would sort out why we could not buy any beer. We arrived at the supermarket and lo and behold they were selling beer to anyone. The conclusion we came to was that they don’t sell it in the mornings which was the time we normally go out shopping (as its cooler). We are still puzzled as to why wine is available all day.

In the evening we decided, along with Paul and Lorraine, to buy a really cheap air conditioning unit we have seen for sale. Of course we are only buying it to keep the cats cool. Otherwise we’d be happy to suffer. Our thoughts were that at the amazing low price even if it only cools the bedroom a bit we can’t go wrong…..or so we thought.

Naturally Anne was given the job of negotiating since we wanted to buy two of them which she did with some success. When we were given the boxes they felt very light so we checked inside to make sure they really were full – all looked ok. On the way back from the boats we noticed the boxes said they only use 80w of power – hardly anything which is good as it means we could even use them at anchor. This was looking to be an even better purchase than we first thought.

We arrived back at the boats and opened the boxes like excited children. We started to read the instructions in French...and then went to Paul and Lorraine’s boat for a beer while Lorraine translated the instructions for us all.

Well they are air conditioning units, sort of, Tunisian style. It is actually a fan, a container you fill with cold water and continual band of material that moves dipping in the water and passes in front of the fan. The water evaporates and hence it blows coolish air out. Hence the cheap price and low power consumption. We have come to the conclusion that on a hot dry day with no air movement they would be quite effective. Ah well…at least it wasn’t much money.

Thursday was boat cleaning day. We spent most of the morning cleaning the boat and disturbing the cats sleep. The temperature feels lower as there are quite strong winds blowing at the moment. We have various ways of knowing its cooler. The obvious one is that Yoyo starts meowing for her tuna much earlier in the day. It started at 10am today. Normally when it’s hot she won’t start until 5pm. She is very patient spending hours looking at us sending cat esp messages saying “feed me tuna”. The 2kg of fresh tuna is all gone now. She can’t understand why we don’t go and buy more.