Yesterday Eric was up early to work on the generator. He added more coolant. He took apart the intake hose to see if maybe something was stuck (or maybe even growing) inside it. It was totally clear. Then he tested the flow of the water from the through hull. It seemed slow. Hmmm. Something was stuck on the intake under the boat. We did a quick check on that before, but did not find anything. Something to check again when we get to cleaner water.

The streets were again decorated with banners, different from the ones we saw last week, and also with flags. The fireworks started at 0800. By 1000 we could hear several marching bands playing in the street.

We were in no rush to leave, so we decided to make a stop by the maritime museum before heading out. Like most of the buildings in the area, the museum is made of limestone and each level has crazy high ceilings. The museum is fairly large, and it has a nice collection of the standard maritime museum stuff. There are all kinds of old navigation instruments, uniforms, weapons, anchors, fenders, amphoras, really early inverters, and other accoutrements for life at sea. In a room of more modern equipment, there were even some missiles. There were models of all kinds of boats throughout the display, and one entire room was turned into a full scale model of the engine room of a real Maltese dredging ship, the Anadrian. There is an exhibit on the history of the steamship, as well as an exhibit on the era when the British turned Malta into a major naval base. And, oddly enough, there was a traveling exhibit featuring clown art. It was kind of random to walk from the life-size replica of a work ship into a room full of clowns.

After we left the museum, we headed out on Kosmos. We really didn’t need to leave for Tunisia until sunset, but we wanted to stop by an anchorage called The Blue Lagoon off the island of Camino, between Gozo and Malta Islands. We were told it is just beautiful and we would love it. Apparently, everyone in the entire country of Malta who owns a boat decided to go there, too. It was a zoo. We were pretty uncomfortable with how tightly packed the boats were, so we anchored out in the fringes, only to have some other boats drop anchor disconcertingly close to us. We were also shocked at how fast some of the boats were zooming around in the anchorage, weaving in and out of the anchored boats and getting much too close to hulls and anchor chains.

Eric donned a mask and jumped in for a swim. He started checking under the boat and ah hah! He found a plastic bag stuck in the intake on the port side of the boat. It turns out we were mistaken about which through hull the generator was attached to when Christi did the quick check. Eric excitedly got out and turned on the generator. It was back to normal temperature and there was no white smoke. Yay! Generator mystery solved. Eric also cleaned the water line and scrapped some marine growth from a couple spots.

We relaxed in The Blue Lagoon until sunset, then left for Tunisia. The weather was absolutely perfect. The wind was 1 4 knots and the seas were calm and peaceful. We were making great speed, too. The moon was half full and beautiful. It was a perfect night until the Monkey Boy came on the radio. But then Eric thought of something brilliant to tune out the Monkey Boy. He turned off the main radio with the awesome long range reception and turned on the little hand held radio that has less range. The Monkey Boy was gone, but we could still be contacted by a boat within our line of sight, if needed. Too bad we didn’t think of it sooner!

Since we were making such good speed, we were on track to pull into Tunisia in the middle of the night. We happened to be passing the Italian controlled island of Linosa, so we decided to stop and anchor there for a few hours. At sunrise we pulled into an anchorage notated on the charts. It looks to us like it is probably a volcanic island since the dirt is black. We were anchored in front of a tiny town, or maybe not a town at all but simply a cluster of buildings of some sort. There were train tracks and a train passed by once. There was a sailboat anchored in the bay with us, and a few ships, including a big cruise ship, passed us. We were told that this island and another Italian island not too far from here are a hotbed for illegal immigrant smuggling from Africa to Europe. We watched carefully for human trafficking boats, but didn’t see any that we could tell.

We rested for 5 hours, and then continued on. To our delight, the sea conditions were even better. The wind died to 1 2 knots and seas became flat as a pancake. It felt and looked like we were gliding along on a slightly rumpled blanket of silk. Towards late afternoon, the horizon and sea melted into one and you could not see where one began and the other ended. It is humid as all get out and you could almost see the mist in the damp air, creating an ever so gentle haziness over the whole picture. It looked like a mystic scene out of a fairy tale movie. If we were near Valletta right now, we would seriously expect to see Gandalf standing at the top of one of the medieval walls, casting a spell.

The bad thing about lack of wind is lack of air flow. By 1600 we broke down and turned on the air conditioner for a few hours. We just couldn’t take the heat anymore. By 2200, the wind was down to a knot or less and the sea was completely still, a swimming pool reflecting the moon and stars above. All was completely tranquil. Days like today we absolutely love traveling on a boat. If only every day at sea could be like today.

As the seas got smoother, our speed kept getting better. Not wanting to arrive at night, we kept lowering the RPM’s to slow down. When we left the island we were doing 1650 RPM. By 1630 we were down to 1550 RPM. By 0130 we were down to 1450, and still worried about coming in too early.