36.22.39N 10.32.69E

On Tuesday we had a whirl wind of activity. We washed the decks, sorted out the lazerette and gave a really good clean inside the boat. This was needed because everything was covered in dust and we also had unwanted visitors on board the boat (3 flying cockroaches – all now in cockroach heaven!).

Plan A was to sail to Sicily on Thursday, however by Wednesday morning we were so shattered after working for 2 weeks on the boat. Anne has also not fully shaken off her cold so we decided to postpone the sail until a few days later. As circumstances would have it, this was a wise decision.

The life raft was returned after the service, however it had been very badly repacked and was not fully in the case. This was duly returned for re-packing.

We also transferred the diesel over from our “dirty” tank to our “clean” tank (via a pre-filter) so we could re-fill the “dirty” tank with the cheap diesel here in Tunisia (45p / litre). However we had some diesel spurt out of the overflow pipe on to the deck. This took quite a while to clean up. We then transferred some diesel back from the “clean” to the “dirty” tank while we figured out what went wrong. Our conclusion was we need to remove the filler cap before transferring the diesel as the fast pump is pumping quicker than the air coming out of the overflow pipe can manage.

Finally we noticed a puddle on the floor by the chart table (and cat litter tray). At first we thought maybe a cat had missed the litter tray, but as the puddle got larger in front of our eyes we realised it was something else. After checking all the seacock’s in case they were leaking we found that the toilet pump we had serviced last week was now leaking. After a clean up we decided it was time to stop and poured ourselves a large G&T. Tomorrow will be a better day.

In summary, when you smell diesel you have diesel leaking, when you smell wee then sort it out quickly and when you smell gin it’s the end of a long day!