Cagliari To Tunis

We are back in North Africa! On Sunday morning we cast off the docklines and motored out of the Bay of Cagliari, destined for Tunisia.

Our last day in Sardinia included the usual last-minute rush of provisioning and preparation, plus checking out of Italy with the harbour immigration. Added to that is the logistics of taking COVID tests and timing them to be valid upon arrival at our destination (they can’t be more than 72 hours old, but we wouldn’t be arriving for about another 60 hours). Thank goodness for our friends Tania & Lorenzo from s/v Talata, who simultaneously babysat the kids and drove us to the test centre!

After saying our goodbyes and waving farewell to our winter home, we pointed our nose for the Gulf of Tunis. Sometime in the middle of the night we crossed from Italian to Tunisian waters, and at daybreak we hoisted our new courtesy flag for the sixth country on our around-the-world adventure. With an accurate forecast and consistent winds we sailed for at least 75% of the journey, arriving at Port Marina de Gammarth 30 hours later. It was a big first trip of the season for us, after sitting still for almost half a year. But despite how tiring an overnight sail is, and how taxing the constant movement of a boat can be, we all coped with the fatigue surprisingly well.

We are confined to the boat for 48 hours before a second round of COVID tests, after which we will be able to leave the marina. But the sun is shining and the weather is warm… Summer has begun!