35.45.35N 10.50.18E

Yes we really have moved. We know… you really thought we’d be in Hammamet forever.

We were up early on Saturday. The alarm went off at 4.45 on Saturday morning and we were ready to sail at 6.00 – all checked out and on our way. The forecast wasn’t perfect – it had a last minute blip and decided to blow a southerly element – as we were heading south this is not good. That said once we were on our way we had very little wind. So we motored down to Monastir.

The cats were little stars. They weren’t very happy being on the move but they soon realised they had no choice and settled down for the 8 hour journey. All went well and we arrived outside the fishing port where the boats are lifted. We rang Mark from Rafiki who was already out of the water to ask if it was ok to come in to the lifting slip. After much typical Tunisian confusion (come in now, no stop they have decided to launch a fishing boat), we came in and tied up along side the travel hoist slipway.

On Monday we were lifted by the largest crane we have ever seen (250 Tonnes) and carefully placed / balanced on some oil drums “on the hard”.

Wanda looks tiny in the large crane

Tuesday the work started in earnest, cleaning the propeller until it shines (much too every ones amusement / fascination), removing old anodes, cleaning the shaft, cleaning the seacock outlets and replacing the split pins and string on the skeg wire. By Friday the heat and work finally overcame us and we had a day of rest – well it is over 40 every day with little breeze. As part of our day of rest we went to the local market to stock up on a bit of fresh veg and tins of Tuna. Naturally we can only work in the shade hence our jobs each day are dictated by the sun! As a compromise we have paid for Wanda to have her hull polished and waxed.

There are 4 boats here in the yard and everyone is very friendly. We should add that the boat yard has a dog/dog and dog/cat war each night, usually about 4am. On Thursday night a local cat managed to jump up onto out boat (no mean feat) and this caused a certain amount of “interest” from our cats. Enough said.

Since it has been so long since we blogged we really should provide a few words to let you know what we have been doing. In summary lots of odd jobs, such as re-stitching the main sail cover as the stitching had deteriorated in the sun, buying some new glasses for Anne (quite fun with the language barrier but all ok in the end), having to fly back to the uk to have the charger/invertor repaired as it “started to smoke” and would no longer work, changing the outboard throttle cable and failing miserably as the old cable metal casing had ceased to the tiller arm (this is still an ongoing project now) plus lots of other little jobs we have now forgotten about.

Wanda propped up and balanced on oil drums and logs