Rose & Brian 05 February 2010

Tunisia – Monastir to Houmt Souk

Hi All

We were feeling a bit chilly in Monastir with the continuing tales of snow and ice from
both the UK and further afield, so decided to move further south. One plan was to
stop off on the way at fishing harbours, but when the final day of our month in
Monastir arrived the winds were looking a bit unsettled. As we didn’t really want to
be stuck in a fishing harbour with no facilities for a week or so, we did the usual and
just sailed the 160 miles overnight to arrive in Houmt Souk at 2pm on Friday 29th
January.

It is extraordinary how a small distance

makes so much difference to the local
customs and outlook. Houmt Souk is still a
bit of a tourist haven, but much more down to
earth than Monastir. It is smaller, so doesn’t
have as much to see and do in the town, but
has a completely different ambience. It does
have the requisite castle of course!

The sun has shone almost continously since

we arrived a week ago, although it does get
cold at night, there are flamingos, herons
and egrets in the bay on the other side of the breakwater, and we are treated to the
tourist “pirate boats”
going out almost
daily with sound
systems at full
volume playing a
mournful dirge and
returning at about
3pm to the track “I
will survive” at full
blast!

Firstly though, what

have we done in the
meantime? The
planned car trip got
off to a bad start
when I booked the
hire car for the
wrong date (16th
pm instead of 15th pm). However they were kind enough to bring the car early on
the Saturday and we set off almost at the same time as we had planned. The hire
company (Camelcar) seems to offer very good rates, made even better as we were
allowed an extra free day because of my mistake. Mr Kamel (!) the company agent
who had helped me out of my error delivered the car to the marina, I handed over the
£75 cash for 3 days (no credit card impression taken), then took him to get petrol (the
cars are delivered empty) and drop him off at the taxi rank. As neither of us has
driven for 6 months it was a bit of a nervous time negotiating Monastir’s busy streets,
but as with riding a bike, it all came back quickly.

The Rough Guide hits the nail on the head with its description of driving in Tunisia. I
have to say that we have complied with the pedestrian and cyclist rules quite happily.
These are that cyclists and mopeds can drive in any direction on any road, frequently
in the middle to avoid potholes and raised manhole covers. Pedestrians have right of
way so long as they are walking along the road (not trying to cross) preferably four
abreast. Pedestrians and cyclists don’t have any rights to cross roads though unless
they have a death wish or are just being awkward. Cars have to negotiate all these
moving targets, as well as other cars pulling out, or trucks stopping in the middle of
the road to drop off passengers or goods, and do generally have to obey one way
signs (unless you can get away with it)! Louages (public minibuses that go from town
to town very very quickly) have right of way over everyone.

The trip took in Kairouan, an

Islamic centre with a
significant and very old
mosque with a very
impressive exterior wall and
doorways.

Posh hotel converted from

the old fort where we stopped
for a beer and to warm up – it
was a cold day!
 Part of the Grand Mosque – the 7th holiest
place in Islam

James and Rose went to the carpet museum,

then we visited the Governor’s House.
This was the residence of the Turkish Bey – a
local governor. Very opulent carved and
painted interiors. As soon as we had visited a
few rooms, we were seated with cups of mint
tea and the rolled up carpets which had lined
the walls were duly unrolled for our delectation.
The different qualities and methods of weaving,
embroidering and knotting were explained in
some repetitive detail. Brian and I removed
ourselves at one stage and saw a bit more of
the house, and Rose, James and Rhiannon
eventually tore themselves away although the
price had fallen considerably. Rose wanted to
get a carpet and had identified what she
wanted and the type of quality she wanted in the museum. Later they looked in
another shop, and were taken back to the Governors House to barter, so she
managed to get what she wanted at a good price!

We stayed in a reasonably pleasant

Hotel (called Spendid – you can just
see the sign in the middle of the
picture), and had an early supper
across the road and night in after
sharing a bottle of wine while watching
the Africas cup match on TV along
with the hotel owner and his friends.
The football continued to form a theme
of the next two weeks up to this week,
when I assume Egypt beat Ghana in
the final. The café here where we are
using the internet was packed, and a
great cheer went up in the 63rd minute
– I assume overtime – when Egypt
scored. I suspect there is a bit of a north south divide here…...

The next day we went on to El

Jem which has the largest
remaining Roman amphitheatre
in the world – it was very
impressive.
 Among the pictures I took was one with
Brian standing in one of the external
arches – you can barely see him it is so
big! It is amazing how the detailed stone
carving can last this long when it must be
scoured by sand and wind every year.

We then went to the museum on the other side of town which was extraordinary. It
has been built on the site of a number of Roman houses the excavated remains
being laid out at the rear of the museum.

Again there were mosaics remaining on

the ground covered in lichen and grass,
but the best ones had been lifted and
displayed in the museum along with some
of the artefacts that had been dug up.
The mosaics are huge and very bright
when cleaned up.
 On our way back to the
car we stopped off at a
small café and were
treated to an enormous
and very tasty lunch. The
usual free starters
(harissa, crudites, fried
samosas etc) with a big
basket of bread were
followed by soup, various
main course choices
(stews, omellette mainly)
then ice-cream and mint
tea! We waddled back to
the car and drove back to
Monastir feeling very full.
Brian and I went for a
beer which arrived with more tasty snacks and a small plate of chips so we didn’t
need anything more to eat that day! It was an early night too as we had promised to
help get Swyn-y-Mor over to the boat yard to be lifted out and have her bottom
cleaned.

We managed to be ready
by 8am, James reversed
out of his tight spot with
consumate ease. After
some discussion and
some help to take the
front sail and stay off to
let the hoist manouevre
into the right place the
boat was lifted out with
James gnawing his
knuckles in anxiety –
please don’t drop my
home! All went well until
we discovered that some
vital items had been left
on board, so James and I went to get them, climbing a ladder up the side of the boat
and wading through the slurry of sand and mud that had accumulated.
The past few days had been really
windy with waves breaking over the
harbour wall and depositing large
amounts of sand on the road. As the
hoist was being put in place to get
James’s boat out the water a large JCB
turned up to clear away the sand and
rubble so that the hoist could reverse
back with the boat on its slings.
Remarkable coordination of effort I
thought.

James, Rose and Rhiannon stayed on our boat that day. Rose and Rhiannon had
school work to get on with, so we took James in the car and went bird watching in the
lagoons to the north and west of Monastir. It was pretty cold, so apart from one
fruitless excursion through a very muddy lake bed we ended up watching some
waders from the car while
eating large hot turkey
baguettes we had
purchased. The second
lagoon we visited didn’t
exist at all – we drove
down a dirt track towards it
but there were just bushes
and sheep and a very
unpleasant hustler who
wanted money to look after
the car which we turned
down with some effort.

A long drive back through

the acres of olive trees that
characterise this part of the world, and Rose had started making dinner for us – very
nice! We had managed to clear one of the aft cabins for Rose and James to sleep in,
and made a Rhiannon sized space in the other so we all fitted quite snugly. It was a
great opportunity to find out what it would be like to have visitors on the boat – no
problem at all you will be glad to hear. Rose and James were very thankful to have
somewhere to stay without too much hassle as well, so everyone was happy.

The next morning, being able to keep the car until 6pm (an extra half day) Rose and I
went off into Sousse to check train and bus times for their trip to Libya. We managed
to stop off at Carrefour where I managed to get some very nice pain-au-chocolat for
my breakfasts, we picked up some pies and pizza slices, then went on to Kalaa
Seghira to check further train times. We got thoroughly lost on the way back but still
managed to get back to Monastir to deliver a rather late lunch. The afternoon was
spent helping James and Rose get Swyn-y-Mor back into the water and taking her
out for a quick spin round the bay to empty bilges and holding tanks in preparation for
being left on her own for 6 weeks while the Parnells tour Libya and Egypt.

The rest of the week was spent

carrying out essential repairs, as well
as doing some more wiring. As you
may remember, the kicker bracket had
broken on our way from Palma to
Tabarka. In Monastir we took the
broken part to the shipyard and they
managed to get another one cast in
aluminium for us. Unfortunately they
didn’t have any stainless steel rivets or
a gun big enough fix them. After a bit
of hunting around we decided to order
rivets and a rivet gun from the UK as
they are surely going to be needed
again at some stage. The package
arrived in three days from Atlantic
Spars who had been really helpful. It
took two half days to rivet the new
bracket on, refit the kicker and then drill
out the rivets on the boom that we
noticed had become loose.
Fortunately the holes in the thing the
boom is attached to (technically called
the gooseneck) were fine – we had
been worried that they also might have
become enlarged, so we riveted it all
back together with a couple of
washers to take the slack out of the
holes where they had worn, and put in

a couple of extra rivets for good

measure having looked carefully at the
boats around us who all had at least 8
rivets there rather than our paltry four!

This is someone else’s gooseneck, but

you can see the principle. It was the
light grey aluminium bit on the left that
was loose and now has more rivets in it! The dark grey gooseneck slots inside it.
Big rivet gun above.

Another small task was to put a cover on the new anchor windlass switch, as it was a
bit fizzly when holding it in wet hands! Brian used a piece of small waste pipe and
two water bottle tops amazingly just the right size to fit inside the pipe. (As B keeps
reminding me, 12V won’t hurt, but it was a bit tingly). He rewired some 12V sockets
with thicker cable – we use them for our spotlight which wasn’t operating at full
strength on the old cable. While he did that he fixed the aft cabin ceiling panel that
had been loose. All these little jobs! I have just seen Rampage’s blog
(http://djbyrne.wordpress.com/) which hilariously describes their similar experiences
– one ostensibly small job extends into something much bigger!

A propos nothing, but

thought you might like
to see the octopus we
had in a very nice stew!
Mackerel were eaten
the following day….

It was time for us to start thinking about where to go next too, as mentioned at the
beginning. Our month was up but the weather forecasts kept changing. Our original
plan, right up until the last day, was to spend a couple of nights at Mahdia, then on to
La Chebba – both fishing harbours. Then we were going to negotiate the Kerkennah
Channel using a route given to us by the French couple we met in Tabarka, and
anchor in the shallows before finally coming down to Houmt Souk on Djerba Island.
However on Wednesday evening we saw that further strong winds were forecast for
the following week and we decided to head straight here while it was reasonably
calm. We had a good trip although a bit bumpy, and successfully negotiated the oil
and gas wells scattered around the bay north of the harbour although the wind
direction meant we had to go east of them rather than west which would have been
the shorter route.

Kerkennah islands in
the middle, Jerba at
the bottom, Houmt
Souk is on the north
coast of Jerba. Dark
blue=shallow,
Green=dry land so we
went all the way
round outside the
dark blue bits!
Purple blobby bits are oil wells
It was Brian’s turn to cook the beef stew in rather bumpy conditions en route, but just
as he was starting he smelled smoke and the fire alarm went off. It wasn’t his
cooking – the bilge pump wiring had shorted out (had the new switch been left on by
mistake?) and a considerable amount of wiring behind the switch panel had melted.
Everything was in darkness and we were sailing without navigation lights, radio or
GPS for ¼ hour until he managed to jerry-rig the connections back again with a few
crocodile clips and bits of wire. I was just preparing to start doing a bit of manual
course plotting! The boat stank of burnt plastic for a few days after that. It has taken
a day or three in Houmt Souk to get it sorted out and to find that the bilge pump
motor itself has burnt out. Fortunately the shower pump motors are the same type
and as the one in Brian’s workshop is redundant he has swapped it over. We are
hoping that we will be able to get the motor rewound here – in Tunisia they are adept
at fixing things. Further work on the wiring included taking out more redundant stuff,
and fixing the switch panel so that all the switches actually do what is on the label at
last! The bilge pump is back on the panel too – having to repair some of the burnt
bits meant that Brian took the whole thing apart, found out why some of the switches
didn’t work and fixed them. The inbuilt cutout switches he discovered will prevent a
recurrence of our melt down.

The formalities when

we arrived were the
least formal we have
experienced in Tunisia.
We are tied up on a
pontoon with about 10
other yachts – of which
maybe four are
occupied. Most are
French – a couple we
met briefly in Sidi Bou
Said were here briefly
before they set off for
Lampedusa. The cost
of mooring here is quite
low – about £150 for the
month.

There is lots
of activity in
the harbour
with loads of
fishing
boats. They
didn’t move
for the first
few days as
it was quite
windy –
some of the
fishermen
seem to live on the boats and looked very bored. Then the wind dropped and they all
took off together. The sea here is very calm even in high winds as it is all very
shallow – one of the features of the area but a bit alarming when navigating around.
 We have taken the plunge and
rented a flat for the month. We
were pointed to one of the café
waiters who hunted around and
found a huge place about 15
minutes cycle ride from the
marina. It is a bit scruffy and
cold (no heating to speak of),
but has 3 nice bedrooms and
toilet, shower and cooking
facilities, not to mention
satellite TV! The marina here
has no toilets or showers yet
(still in the process of being
built) so we are developing the
routine of eating dinner and
sleeping in the flat, spending the morning doing odd jobs there and then coming to
the boat for lunch and working on the boat in the afternoons or even going for a sail.
We have yet to explore the island and the flat is fairly close to the bus station. My
sister is joining us for a week soon, so the flat will be handy for her to stay in as well,
although we will be out touring the south of Tunisia for a few days.

That’s about all for now – I hope this finds you all well and thinking spring thoughts!

Rose & Brian

Fishermen going back to their boat