Month: May 2025

Following are some pictures of what we encounter on a daily basis in Monastir, Tunisia.

Welcome to Cap Marina in lovely Monastir, Tunisia. This is our berth for the winter season. It’s a huge change from the fancy mega-yacht marina of Porto Montenegro, but at 1/4 the price, it’s more our style. We were helped into our berth by one of the marineros, Mohannet, and went off to manage the clearing in process. Similar to Morocco, it’s a tedious process between the Garde Nationale (Coast Guard), Immigration, and Duane (Customs), that takes a few hours. It doesn’t help being sleep deprived, but you get it done.

We took a long nap to recover until the early afternoon. Then, when we were feeling refreshed, our friend, Janine, collected us and took us on a logistics tour of town. A new experience for us, we had met several cruisers in Malta and they were all wintering in Monastir. Normally we would have to figure everything out ourselves, but there’s nothing like having a friend to show you where the local cell phone store is for a SIM card, grocery store, ATMs, and most importantly where the best milk shakes are in town!

The walk to and from town takes you along some beautiful beaches, and right through local history, passing the ribat (fortress) and mausoleum of revered former leader Bourguiba.

The mausoleum of Habib Bourguiba

We both agreed that the sail from Malta to Tunisia was one of our favorites of the season. We had a lovely beam reach from the south, followed by a beam reach from the north. Very little swell, it was champagne sailing the entire way.

The only distressing part of the trip was the regular radio calls to Lampedusa regarding migrant boats. Lampedusa is a small island belonging to Italy that is the most likely landing spot for migrants fleeing the middle east and Africa via Libya and Tunisia. With good southern winds, traffickers bring the migrants out in large dinghies/boats, remove the engine, and cast them afloat, with the idea that they will float toward the island where they will be rescued and either given asylum or flee on their own accord. We saw one such boat and reported it to the Lampedusa authorities, after getting close enough to confirm that it was empty. We have a sturdy boat that had protected us in all conditions. I cannot fathom the level of desperation that these migrants must feel to have to risk their lives in these types of boats that go out in sometimes awful conditions.

Our other bit of concern was a near miss with an Italian ferry around midnight. We were sailing through a cluster of fishing boats which move erratically (but usually slowly enough to avoid). I had noticed another vessel, which turned out to be a ferry. Unfortunately I lost track of the light combinations in the dark, and suddenly realized that the ferry was heading straight for us. Thanks to AIS I could hail the ferry by name on the radio. Though they responded right away, it took what felt like hours (was only a minute most likely) to confirm that they saw us. The skipper very kindly adjusted course so that we would not have to (difficult when under sail, it’s not like we can speed up), and wished us a good evening.

Though the wind was blowing only 10 knots, we triple reefed the main and only had a slip of a jib out to slow us down dramatically. We don’t like entering new ports at night, much less new countries. Additionally, Tunisia has many massive fishing nets that are not lit at night that we didn’t want to tangle with. We ghosted along and made it into port just after daybreak. Welcome to Tunisia!

It was time to push on to Tunisia for our winter berth, and to have some time to explore a new country before we flew home for winter. The weather window was good. Just one problem – I had come down with Norovirus. After a day of being so sick I wanted to die, and another day of sleeping and letting my poor stomach recover, I was beginning to feel human again. We moved the boat a few hours north to St. Paul’s Bay for a better spot for departure. Of course, I had just enough strength to pick up the new mooring and secure the boat before I needed another nap to recover from that strenuous exercise after being sick.

I was feeling better later in the day and we went ashore for a final dinner at the cutest little Indian restaurant (memories of Wednesday night curry night in Montenegro). Of course my stomach was still a little raw, so we wound up packing up most of the dinner and taking it with us, which made for tasty leftovers during passage.

The Maltese skies the night before we left did not disappoint.