Mahon to Tunisia May 20 - 26,  2001 Menorca is the easternmost of the Balearic islands, Mahon being at 39 53.6 N  004 16.4 E. There are many remains from the Talayotic period predating the Phoenician, Carthaginian, Greek, and Roman occupations of ancient history. Menorca is one of the islands claiming to be the Land of the Lotus Eaters, described in Homer's Odyssey where Ulysses' men ate "the fruit of forgetfulness". (Incidentally, the others claiming this distinction are Mallorca and Djerba in Tunisia.) Megalithic monuments from the Talayotic period, prior to 500 BC, are scattered in open fields for people to easily explore. These are talaiots (large stone oblong structures, some having internal chambers), taulas (large T-shaped stone structures), and navetes (smaller stone constructed burial chambers).  After the Carthaginian, Greek and Roman periods, the Vandals dominated for a short time before the Moorish period from 950 to 1287 AD, after which the Crown of Aragon and Catalan colonization solidified the link to Spain. In the 18th century Mahon was occupied by the British with a couple of French conquests and occupations of short duration, because of its strategic location and value as a naval port. In fact it was the French naval victory over a British fleet which withdrew from battle under Admiral Byng in 1756 that caused him to be executed by the Admiralty "pour encourager les autres". There is a Menorcan dialect that differs from that of Mallorca, which in turn is a variant of Catalan, which in turn is different from Castillian Spanish of Madrid. This must complicate the education of the children, as Menorcan is the first language taught in schools. Then Mallorcan or Catalan is taught at the secondary school level. If students want to go to university in Spain, then Castillian is used. All these dialects differ to varying degrees. For example there are four words for milk. They are leche, esne, llet, eite. Which is which dialect, I don't know. Under Franco, Castillian was the language used, but since then the regions (Catalonia, Mallorca and Menorca) have been semi autonomous and reinstated their original dialects. Menorca is not as well developed for the package tourist trade as is Mallorca. Frankly we liked it for its simplicity better than Mallorca. The floating island where we were moored was enjoyable, and cost only an economical 1500 pesetas (about $12.00 Cdn) per day, including water and electricity. May 23rd, we dinghied around the harbour and I explored a few old gun emplacements quarried into the limestone rock. We then toured Fort Marlborough, a large circular fortification built by the British, embedded in the rock with radiating counter-mined tunnels. It was a major defensive position that protected the larger Fort San Filipe, guarding the harbour. After stocking up on the economical wines and beers of Menorca, and other ship's supplies while we had the rental car, we returned to Veleda to get ready to depart the Balearics at last. We left at 1645 for a three day, 320 nautical mile passage to Bizerte in Tunisia. It was good to get back to a sea routine with overnight passages and all. For the first two days we had light force one to three westerly winds moving us along, sailing and motor sailing, quite comfortably, doing 112 miles the first day and 118 miles the second. This was our longest passage since crossing the North Sea last year, except the winds and waves were nowhere near as bad. Even Judy had her sea legs, although I still did all the cooking and cleaning up below deck.  We are still using our PUR watermaker, and changed the filter for the first time since leaving London last April. Our waste disposal followed the same procedure as we used in our Atlantic crossing. On long passages we cannot carry large bags of garbage on board, and so have an environmentally acceptable disposal policy to reduce the amount we retain until our next stop. We do not throw overboard any plastics, packaging materials, oils, diesel or waxed papers. We will jettison vegetable, meat and other food scraps as they are biodegradable Paper is torn into small pieces before going overboard. Cans are punctured, and empty bottles are filled with salt water before thrown overboard. These procedures reduce the amount of stored garbage significantly. However we only follow this policy when on long passages in open water out of sight of land, as we do not want any of our garbage drifting on to local beaches. One of the values of the Seven Seas Cruising Association to which we belong is to "Leave a clean wake". This refers not only to not polluting, but also to leaving a good impression of cruisers so that those who follow in your wake will be well received. We also had water problems while crossing, in that the engine would spontaneously stop pumping cooling water. This has happened a few times, and we haven't been able to assess why. The water intake lines are open; we check this each time the problem occurs. The impeller seems fine. We have replaced it. The belts are tight enough. What seems to work is to force air through the engine side downstream from the water pump, then reconnect the hose. So far, this has worked. Pardon the anthropomorphic analogy, but it appears the engine likes a periodic blow job. The process is bothersome as when starting the engine, we cannot be sure it will pump water, and results in frustrating or dangerous delays. I suspect it has something to do with the water pump itself. We had a similar problem with the old engine, and when we traded it in, E & C commented that the back plate of the water pump was warped and thus lost efficiency. Maybe I'll have to take it off and have it checked. We noticed large numbers of vellelas, small floating jelly fish with a small transparent sail set diagonally across their rectangular bodies. In addition we saw several large sea turtles which we understand feed off the vellelas. I even set out my fishing line, but to no avail. At least I didn't lose my lures, but the line was fantastically twisted from uselessly dragging in the water all day. I am not a fisherman. So far it is fish 3, me 2. I have lost 3 lures to catch only 2 small non-keepers. We have had more luck with conch and mussels, as they don't swim very fast. We even had a large school of dolphins play around us for a few minutes the third day out. The third day the winds increased a bit up to westerly force 4 to 5 (11 to 21 knots) for an enjoyable spinnaker run for a few hours. Then as we were heading straight downwind, a difficult course for our loose footed spinnaker, we switched to a wing on wing with our genoa held out by the whisker pole. However the winds went up to force 6, and the following seas were more pronounced. Our autopilot couldn't handle it, so we had to hand steer the last 24 hours. After ten hours of wing on wing, in surging following seas, the whisker pole fractured in half. We couldn't keep the genoa out without it, and it was blanketed behind the main when we tried it on the same side, so we furled it and continued on under main only. It didn't really affect our speed as with the heavy winds we were still doing hull speed most of the time, even with a reef tied in the main. Night sailing was beautiful, with a glorious starry sky after the sliver of a new moon had set. Because of the clear weather as we approached the North African coast we saw a couple of lovely sunrises and sunsets. Few ships were sighted the first two days out, but the third night as we were passing south of Sardinia in the Sardinia Strait, we saw several large ships and dozens of fishing vessels. The fishing boats especially were a problem as they were setting long floating nets with white lights marking some of the floating ends. We didn't hit any, but our anxiety level was up for fear of crossing them. This was the first time we had seen nets with marker lights. We had been cautioned in the pilots about the tuna nets fishermen set in this area. This stretch of the Med from Sardinia to Sicily to the north, and from Bizerte to Cap Bon in Tunisia on the south is the choke point dividing the western Med from the eastern Med. After the exhausting third night of hour-on hour-off hand steering, we approached Bizerte a couple of hours after dawn, seeing the sand fringed beaches with the Kroumirie and Mogod Mountains in the background. Getting ready to enter port, we again had water problems when we started up the engine for the first time in 24 hours, but it worked after blowing through the engine. At 0755, we finally landed alongside the floating jetty, after narrowly missing a length of line floating 40 metres from it. We were in North Africa! Bizerte, Tunisia, 37 16.5N, 009 52.9E. Next log