We sail to Hammamet, Tunisia

September 4^th, 2013.

The 170 miles south west to Hammamet is a nice distance. You have lots of choice for departure and/or arrival time.
We set off at just gone 2pm after looking after a few jobs and getting a few provisions.

Along the route is the island of ‘Pantelleria’.  There was a possibility that we might stop over there at anchor. It is known to be a beautiful island and the only negative is the time to visit has to be weighed against the time elsewhere. This is a typical dilemma we are faced with all the time – should we miss out on yet another sight that just happens to lie conveniently along our general route or should we sail past. If we stop everywhere we would never have  left the south coast of England for a year or two let alone visit the Mediterranean.

I’m thinking that, like all good managers..
..we should put off the decision until it becomes irrelevant!

We had a super sail.
Now was a perfect time to try our hand at fishing again. But, no matter how much goading we tried, Bob just wasn’t about to try his luck on this trip!
Never mind, another time.

The wind varied between 10 and 24 knots during the day and night.
The Sicilian fishermen were out in force and this area is clearly a very busy shipping area as it seemed the whole time we were watching the movements of some group of ships or another.
We passed the Island of Pantelleria in the ‘dark’ - that avoided making any decision on whether to visit, right. Safety first!

A few miles off shore from Tunisia we passed by several oil rigs lit up like Christmas trees. As we approached the rigs to pass by them – a circling launch associated with the rigs ensured that all of his six search lights were concentrated upon us before heading straight towards us. There was no way any boat was going to get within a mile or two there!

As is often the case, our ‘planning’ speed was under-called and we found ourselves having to slow down to avoid entering the marina several hours before daybreak. We had heard that Tunisian authorities are quite strict about their paperwork being completed before doing anything else.
We didn’t expect the various offices to open before 8.00am at the earliest. The last thing we needed was to start our visit of Tunisia with ‘backshish’ to get out of jail!

Just the jib powered us slowly along for the final few miles.