Here is the missing newsletter which has been set aside for so many weeks while other things happened.  As we write "its Tuesday so this must be Spain", Harmonica is tied to a marina dock in Cartagena; we are both catching up on sleep & nursing some tired bodies; Jan is getting laundry & provisioning up to date; and Dave is coughing away trying to arrange for a mechanic to fix a diesel leak on the injector pump.

We wrote in September from the southern tip of the Peloponnes in Greece.  We planned to meet friends in Sicily, and then pay quick visits to Malta & Tunisia on the way west to Morocco & Gibraltar.  It was mostly windward sailing to Sicily, and, as we sailed, we exchanged emails with Austrian/Australian friends Cherie & Gerhard who were weather-bound on the south coast of Italy.  In the evening we watched the light shows from their thunder storms while we were 50 to 100 miles out to sea.  We arrived off Catania, Sicily in the middle of the night and stood off until morning, when the sunrise gave a wonderful & unusual view of Mt. Etna against a clear sky.  Catania deserves its reputation as one of the dirtiest & more expensive ports, but the scruffy & cosmopolitan mediaeval town behind was fun to walk around.  A south African couple in the next boat to us told us where to look for things.  Having washed down and finished shopping, we slapped a coat of varnish on the inside of the cabin then had our long, post-passage sleep.  In the morning, Dave applied a  quick second coat while Jan realized that, by running, we could catch the bus to Mt. Etna and walk up while the weather was still clear.  This was achieved and Dave woke up slowly during the drive up the base of the triangular volcano through attractive suburbs & vineyards.  We had a wonderful day climbing up to 2900 metres over ground still gently smoking since the 2001 eruption, and looking back at the sea behind.  The drive back was uneventful until, nearing Catania bus station, the clouds opened in a torrential thunder storm.  We returned on board to find the hatches still open, and the computer sitting in 1 cm of water!  It has not worked since, but amazingly, the hard disk with our letters, charts & photos was OK.

Mike & Debora are ex university friends of Dave's and we spent a relaxing week with them.  First drying out, then moving to the SE corner of Sicily and back to Syracuse.  M & D traveled light, but found space for fresh supplies of Rowntrees Fruit Gums, and a set of recorders which were used for at least 1 evening quartet.  They returned without the fruit gums, but with 20kg of mainsail, which went back to be recut in England.  The east coast of Sicily is more heavily populated than we expected, but has its Mediterranean quota of men idling away their afternoons in cafes.  The amphitheatre in Syracuse was noteworthy & the museum delivered a mind-numbing tour through prehistoric, Greek, Roman, Punic, ... Norman populations.  A bus trip to Noto took us to the town with a history from bronze age to mediaeval times and a wonderful cathedral which had collapsed in an earthquake but been partially restored for view by erecting scaffolding with an actual-size picture of the cathedral on the front.  Yes your town too could have a beautiful cathedral erected in days!  Also memorable was the palatial hotel built & furnished to luxurious standards in Porto Paolo and then abandoned & vandalized.  I wondered what vendetta lay behind that!  After a day waiting, we had a wonderful close reach across to Malta where Harmonica arrived about 3 hours earlier than expected by keeping up 7 knots or more.

Malta is a tiny country with an equally complicated history extending into the second WW.  It has better services than we had seen for months.  We bought a new hard drive for the second computer, but was told that Toshiba's warranty did not cover immersion in water underneath open windows!  The capital, Valletta, was built and fortified in the late 18th C (the time of Mozart) and we could imagine the buildings suiting that organized, dandyish society.  We got out the bicycles and cycled round much of the main island.  The natural formations & clear lagoons under cliffs & caves were equally impressive.  We waited an extra 2 days waiting for strong westerlies to subside, then checked out from the westernmost Island of Gozo for Tunisia.  Under the cliffs of Gozo, a puff of wind caught the old mainsail and tore it from the leach into the centre between the 1st & 2nd reef points.  With our best main still in England, and the other one ripped, we could only use a small reefed sail.

After 2 days of variable winds, we rounded Cap Bon, Tunisia with plans to stop in Biserte close to Tunis.  However, there was a moderate easterly, and we had the spinnaker up, so Harmonica headed into the night towards Tabarka on the western border with Algeria.  The wind freshened & veered to SW and by 0330 we hove to off Tabarka and Dave snoozed in the cockpit while Jan caught up on sleep below.  Just woken once by a diligent but polite Tunisian Coast Guard official who called on the VHF radio to find out what the boat was doing 5 miles outside their town.  Tabarka is on the eastern end of the Atlas Mountains where throughout history the Barbary pirates used to lurk preying on trading ships.  It is an attractive, rolling, fertile land.

We left Harmonica in Tabarka for five days and went off to explore inland Tunisia (the smallest North African country).  We caught a louage to Tunis.  A louage is an alternative to the bus....Vans that usually seat 6 to 8 passengers and shuttle back and forth along a set route.  There are no fixed departure times, they leave when they are full.  We drove through farming land to Tunis where we spent the night in a youth hostel in the middle of the medina (the old walled centre of the city).  Narrow alleys lined with souks (markets) surround the central mosque.  The hostel was an old converted palace set around a central courtyard decorated with painted tiles.  We met young people from Australia, Holland, Germany, and Britain, all traveling round the African continent.  We felt old but decided as long as we could climb into the top bunks of the dormitories we still qualified to be there.  The following day we caught our next louage for the 8 hour trip to Tozeur an oasis town on the Northern shore of the Chott el Djerid, the largest salt lake in the Sahara desert covering 5,200 square kms.  As we left Tunis behind the landscape became drier with many large fields of small, scrawny olive trees with cactus hedges surrounding them.  Small herds of sheep and goats were watched over by herdsmen.  Donkey and horse carts were a common mode of transport in the country.  We passed many schools disgorging from the gates young children in neat pinafore uniforms carrying oversized satchels.  Gafsa, one of the larger towns we passed through thrived on phosphate mining.  The latter part of the journey passed through vast areas of sand with small oasis towns set amongst thick stands of dark green date palms.  We picked up a group of young Tunisian men who were eager to know what we thought of the Iraq situation.  French is the second language in Tunisia so we could communicate to some extent. Sheep skins were hanging up to dry outside many houses.  Stately Camels wandered in parts of the desert.  We saw many sand fences (a change
ing on to the road and railway track.  We drove through a heavy downpour of rain which threatened to wash out the road in places....it seemed strange in such a dry area.  On arrival in Tozeur we were deposited outside a small hotel where we stayed for 2 nights.  Many of the buildings in the town have interesting decorative brickwork using geometric designs.  The Saturday market was in full swing with a wonderful array of spices on display.  It was disconcerting to pass a small butcher's shop and come face to face with a swinging camel head hanging outside on a large hook.  Many of the women in the small towns wear head covering and black robes but no face veils.  The efforts of the former secular, socialist president, Habib Bourguiba are suppose to have made conditions for women better than anywhere in the Islamic world.  At times Janet did not feel comfortable in spite of covering up.  We walked through the forest of 200,000 date palms which are watered by streams.  The elaborate irrigation system was setup by a mathematician in the 13th Century to guarantee each landowner received an equal share of the water.  Next day, we returned to Tunis by bus, faster and more comfortable than the louage but not so friendly.  We passed through the holy city of Kaurouan the most important Islamic site in North Africa.   Another night in the youth hostel and bus back to Harmonica the following day.

We have already written about the passage from Tunisia to Mallorca.  The radio net is wonderful for keeping in contact.  Once in Palma de Mallorca, we were met at the dock by Ian & Jen with their boat Que II.  They had already arranged with the marina for a berth.  That same afternoon, they introduced us to David Bonner, a sailmaker, who had 3 sails repaired or recut for us in 2 days.  We are now planning to get a yellow or orange storm trysail made since the tanker skipper said we were so hard to see in rough seas off the Algerian coast.

On the subject of radio nets, we just tuned into the Transatlantic net and listened to Trudy in Barbados talking to the vessel hove to for 3 days in subsiding gales 200 miles west of Portugal with a broken rudder.  They sounded OK.
 

Best wishes

Dave & Jan
SV Harmonica
www.techco.ab.ca/harmonica