Coming to Tunisia we had to - as usual - effect a number of urgent repairs. The most serious of which was re-replacing one of the wires of the rigging that we replaced in Malta.
The new one (which in reality was a pretty old one that had been kicking around in the bottom of the boat for a while.) Didn't even last the trip over from Malta and had split in two or three places. Egil was dispatched up the mast to put the old one back. Now we're hoping everything will hold up until we reach home. ...which is getting pretty near now. Unbelievable! We have been sailing for more than a year now. The stars look familiar, we're on the right hemisphere, our clocks are set to the right timezone, the weather is cold and we've stopped provisioning "as much as possible" whenever we find something cheap. In maybe as little as a month we can be in Norway, and by the beginning of August back home by the border to Russia.Whoa, whoa! That doesn't have anything to do with Tunisia, does it? I digress!
Finished with our repairs we got drunk, visited the most dodgy pub since Ivalo-Hotelli and Sevettin Baari combined, and despatched the TV-celebrity Erlend back to Norway as all the attention and groupies he kept drawing got too much for us, modest, quiet and shy as we are.
Then it was time for some sightseeing. Because of the weather we couldn't move anyway, so we bussed over to Tunis and Carthage/Karthago to check out the city. Egil also needed some new shoes to replace his old ones, bought in Egypt. These had disappeared mysteriously, possibly due to extreme ugliness. After having haggled the price down to less than a quarter of the starting price the salesman found it essential to call Egil "Ali Baba" as he handed him his change. Egil thought it necessary to reply by "No, YOU're Ali Baba!" Those who are in the know, know....
In Carthage we checked out some really old bricks. Apparantly made by some rumanians, bad job it seems anyway, since it's all falling apart. After seeing all this and having mangled and abused the french language as much as our rusty high-school french allowed us, we returned to the boat.
Back in Bizerte, oh, yes, that's were we kept the boat, we had to wait a couple of more days for the weather to be tolerable. While we were gone a storm had passed and filled the boat with gravel, sand and dust that didn't go away until yesterday when a weatherfront passed us with crazy winds in the face and water all over the boat. Now it's back to no-wind again, and it seems like we'll stop over a day in Algeria. The Med sucks for sailing.
Tripping with Erlend, the Animal Friend.
The pictures from Malta to Tunisia by way of an unscheduled stopover in Italy.
On the way we finally managed to rip the old jib to shreds and show off some dolphins. Always great fun for the kids, the dolphins. 
In Malta we discovered two things; first of all Egil's cousin Ole were arriving with a crew from his work, not to join us, but to do what Norwegians normally do abroad. We promptly joined. 
Secondly and far less important, we discovered that two of the wires in our rigging had taken such a beating going to Crete that they were coming apart and had to be replaced. That done we returned to the bars, basking in our norwegianness. 
Now we're nursing a four-day hangover, waiting for Erlend, the dyrevenn, so we can leave this place and go to Tunisia. (Unless we change our minds enroute and go somewhere else.)
For us the Canal brought some change in crew; not only did we have on board the essential pilot who showed us which way to pass through the canal (doh...), we had also expeditioned over to Cario to pick up Alex. 
A couple of days spent in Cairo, the guys together for the first time in a couple of years.
So entering the Mediterranean and celebrating with water mixed about 60/40 into a drink called "Vodka", served in a convenient shot-glass, we discovered that in the Med most winds are generated by-, and therefore blowing directly from Crete. Alex got himself a rude awakening as to what blue ocean cruising can be all about, hammering up against the wind blowing a constant 15 to 20 knots from right where you wanna go, but being a good sport he later claimed to have had fun. (Reportedly apart from the first couple of days spent in utter misery and seasickness.)
Quite a bit of clothes really. Things have just got colder since the Maldives, but this is outrageous. Øyvind have actually been force to use pants for the first time in 15 months, and has had to abandon his idea of making it home all the way in shorts. 
To cut the story short, we made it to Crete three days before the Larsen-family's easter holiday where up, but not before Crete had generated a final full gale to be served in our faces on the final approach. Using about every trick in our little book we just made it into harbour, not the marina we intended to go into, but a wharf smack in the middle of town. There Egil's family met up with a crew carrying their best "what? weather? storm? where?"-look. 
Again is the keyword here. Not because we've been turning on the engine a lot lately. No-no-no-no-no-no! We pretty much turned it on in Eritrea and switched it off here in Egypt. To those of you whose geography is not too strong: There's a pret-ty big country in between there called "Sudan".
About 24 hours after leaving Aden and Yemen behind we entered through Bab-El-Mandeb, the Gates of Lament, Tåreporten, whatever you wanna call it. This is literally the gate to the Red Sea, a little gate where Africa and Asia almost meet, narrowing the gap down to just a few miles across. This place is infamous for producing crazy southerly winds at this time of year. If it blows 
Next stop were Eritrea.
We cleared in in Massawa, great place, but expensive to stay.
We didn't want to spend 15USD pr day staying there, and getting visas to travel overland proved a lengthy and tiresome exercise, so the planned trip to Asmara and inland Eritrea didn't happen.
After Massawa we cruised over to some small islands to fish, swim and freedive. Still with Thira. In the evening we cruised over to a small village and had a look at some old Italian gun-emplacements that materialized there. 
That little history-lesson over we joined the villagers on the beach, they provided some firewood and we grilled our fish and we all shared a meal, eating with our hands, communicating through the only two guys in the village who spoke a little English. Later they showed us around in the village, and late in the evening we set sail again. Go north young man!
And this is about where all the "fun" began.
Red Sea factbox: Going up or down the Red Sea you WILL have the wind and current in your back half the way. Depending on the year and which way you're going this might be in the beginning or the end of the trip. The observant reader might already have gathered from the above that going north in the beginning of March you have the wind and current with you in the beginning. ...then you start motoring.
When we finally made it to Pt. Ghalib we met not only Thira, but three other boats that we met on the Maldives. Some of them have met in the Pacific already - some as far back as South America - and kept bumping into each other ever since. Good times, good drinks.
Allright, now we're making our way up towards the Suez Canal. We have a weather window of a couple of days now where there is little or no wind, sometimes even with a southerly component, so we're making use of it. ...to motor in relative comfort.... But; sailing out from Pt. Ghalib, with the wind almost straight from the side? Of course it couldn't last! 
PPS: We're having a discussion whether or not Antarctica is a continent to be included. Of course I mean that it is and that there is therefore no reason to congratulate him on anything whatsoever! 
