A Narrow Escape from Prison in Tunisia

It was lovely to arrive home to New Zealand after our week with the family in Melbourne. Special times indeed.

What I love about coming home to New Zealand are the beautiful wild beaches, the bush walks, long hikes, the familiar native trees, the lovely birdsong, and hanging out with dear friends.

Having reached the ripe old age of 75, I now needed to renew my driver’s license, in person, in New Zealand. So here I am. Once the business of renewing passports and driver’s license was done, I headed down to Tauranga to hang out with my son, Loic and his partner Lauren, and take trips from there to visit friends from Mangawhai Heads, Auckland, Whitianga in the Coromandel, Hamilton and Cambridge with lots of hikes thrown in wherever we could.

It was a busy and action packed 6 weeks before we all flew out to Brisbane to meet up with family in Queensland, Australia.

A rare group photo of all my family now living in Queensland. It was very special to be with my brother Paul and Susie, and all their family.

Meanwhile back in Tunisia, Lane had been working non-stop on the major repairs on Mai Tai.  Luckily, he was still staying in the apartment, as it was now mid-winter which meant a lot of cold, wet and stormy weather. Not ideal conditions to be preparing for a major paint job.  He had removed every bit of deck hardware including all eight winches, and sanded the non-skid off the deck, cabin top and hard top.  The major damage was on the port side, but it was difficult to paint just half a boat. At what point do you stop? A couple of boatyard workers were helping sand the hull in preparation for the paint job over the newly laid fiberglass.

 

During the wet stormy weather, Lane was able to get on with building the interior cabinets with the help of a local cabinet maker who built the cabinet doors as Lane does not have all the tools necessary on board for making these.

Of course, this all took a lot longer than we had initially planned on.  We were pleased with the progress but when I got back from Australia, we were still a very long way off from being ready to relaunch and go sailing.  We had booked and paid for a berth at Monastir Marina for 12 months, so we were keen to get back in our berth and finish some of the work there, which would stop boatyard fees. There is always plenty of activity around the Marina.

Unfortunately, a new problem raised its head.  In Tunisia, when we leave the country with our boat, we need to be out for a minimum of 183 days (6 Months in the country and 6 months out of the country) before returning with the boat, and then we are given another 6 months.

However, last year, we mis-calculated our 6 months out, returning after only 173 days.  So, for this reason we could not get an extension for Mai Tai to stay in Tunisia for longer than six months. We only found this out when we asked Customs for an extension about a week from the six-month expiry date. This is normally a rubber stamp on the form and many cruisers get it. However, without this extension we would be liable for excise tax on Mai Tai. In Tunisia, this is no laughing matter and having a damaged boat in need of repair made no difference with the Customs officials.  The value of the boat is solely in the hands of the Customs Officials, which means they can charge whatever they want for excise tax on the boat. Our six-month deadline to leave Tunisia was rapidly approaching

We asked what our options were and were told to leave the country within 10 days and stay out for at least 6 months before returning.  However, this was nearly impossible for us as the restoration of Mai Tai was still far from being finished. We asked if there were any other options, explaining about the situation with our boat repairs.

They said they would do us a huge favor and allow us one other option; sail out of Tunisia to international waters and change the Registration Document so that it showed the boat registered under a different owner’s name. This option would allow us to enter Tunisia for another six months as they would consider it a different boat. This would allow us to return to finish all the repairs, which seemed like the best choice for us. The boat has always been registered in our joint names, but since Kay has been out of the country for several months, and her visa had plenty of time left, we would put the vessel in her name only, as captain and owner of the vessel. We confirmed with Customs that this would be an acceptable option and they agreed.

Perfect, we thought.  We knew we could make Mai Tai safe and sea worthy enough to go enjoy an overnight sail to the nearby Italian Island of Lampedusa, 150 nms away. There we could contact the New Zealand Maritime Office and make the changes to her ownership.

It felt so good to be under way, even though Mai Tai was a long way from being finished and a home again.  But we will finish all that when we get back to Tunisia.

On arriving in Lampedusa, we anchored off a beautiful beach, not far from town and in front of a row of hotels. However, during the afternoon, strong southerly winds came up making the anchorage very rough, and with a close lee shore. When we went to check in with the Coastguard, we were told to lift anchor and move to a more protected part of the bay, and to tie up to a concrete wall. Memories flooded back to our last experience tied up to a concrete wall, but we did as they requested. However, we did put out an anchor off to deeper waters to keep us at a safe distance from the wall.

The small Italian island of Lampedusa lies just 200nms from North Africa, Libya and Tunisia being the closest countries, so there are often many boats of migrants attempting to escape these countries. Most of them head for Lampedusa, the closest landfall, and many of these are rescued from the overcrowded fragile craft they set out in. The Coastguard Police are from all areas of the EU, here to help control the influx of migrants trying to enter Europe. The line up of high-speed Coastguard boats are stationed ready for action.

While in Lampedusa, we received our new registration document by email with proof that the original is on the way with a tracking record from FedEx Couriers.  We made a colour photocopy of the emailed version and sailed back to Tunisia to check back in.

On arrival, we handed over all our relevant documents to the Customs officials to take care of our routine check in. What we did not know is that Tunisian Customs do not accept copies of Registration Documents for checking into the country, whereas this is quite normal in most of the other countries we have visited. When they saw our lovely colour photocopy, they impounded our boat and threatened us with a hefty fine for having tried to enter the country illegally. Our “case” would be taken to higher authorities at Customs headquarters in the capital, Tunis.

We also had to undergo the routine boat search by 3 or 4 local Customs officials looking very important.  We are always relaxed about this, confident we have nothing to hide.  However, they really went through everything with a fine-tooth comb, determined to find something.

They opened our medical kit drawer where everything was packaged and clearly labelled and discovered that I had some morphine ampoules that I hadn’t declared on their declaration form. This was no laughing matter as they considered us as drug smugglers. Further, as Kay was now the new captain of the vessel, it was she who was liable, not Lane, and the punishment for drug trafficking in Tunisia comes with an automatic prison sentence!!! They were very serious when they took her back to their office to fill in lots of forms, all in Arabic.!!! And with no lawyer or interpreter present and they would not give us copies of paperwork we had to sign.

This whole situation appears to be a bit of a trap for cruisers because the declaration form Customs uses for yachts entering the country does not have a space to declare medical drugs.  They ask for electronics you have onboard, satellite phones, drones, and electrical equipment on the boat. At the bottom there is a space that just says “other”.  We have a prescription for the morphine as we feel it is a necessary item for cruisers like us that are often in very remote areas, where medical care is just not available.  They didn’t care. It wasn’t the fact that we had it on board, it was that we did not declare it on their declaration form.

As soon as we could, we contacted our NZ Consul based in Tunis, to explain our situation. She understood the gravity of the situation and asked us to send her any relevant paperwork so she could follow the situation closely.

So, with this drug smuggling charge on top of entering the country “illegally” due to the “copy” of our registration document we began the long period of waiting, marked by many sleepless nights wondering what was going to happen to us and to Mai Tai. The feeling of being so completely under the control of these custom’s officials was devastating. Thankfully they did allow us to work on Mai Tai even though it was impounded by Customs. We made visits to the head of Customs in Sousse on several occasions to try and convince them that we were not smuggling drugs for sale in their country. Still, we could not shake the nightmare vision of Kay being incarcerated in a Tunisian Women’s prison. It was a pretty frightening thought.

Kay: I do believe that being a 75yr old lady, distraught and doing my best to look frail, actually helped me to get off lightly with a fine for the drug charge of just 1500TD ($NZ 900), to be paid in cash, of course, to the customs officer.  I found out later that the NZ Consul was influential in this decision of keeping me out of jail.

But now, for entering the country illegally with no original Registration Document, the boat was impounded until the fine for that was decided by Customs.  We have hired a translator to help us with all the legal discussions and negotiations about what our punishment would be, and until they decide how much our fine will be. This could take a month or 2 apparently. When the original document arrived from New Zealand 10 days later, we took it straight to the Customs officer. He looked at it and then would not give it back to us. The fines threatened ranged from 20,000 TD ($NZ 12,000) to 2,000 TD ($NZ 1,200), if we were lucky!!! Once again, I know our NZ Consul was watching our case closely. 

This we also saw as a trap for Customs to gather fines.  Above, we mentioned that it was their suggestion that we go into international waters, change the registration and then immediately return.  So, when we returned 5 days later, they knew we would only have a copy of our ships document.  Our New Zealand Consul in Tunisia had her legal team research the law requiring an original document to clear into the country and they could not find any reference to this. However, they said that Customs is known to stretch the legal framework in order to create reasons to collect fines. We were also told that no one ever wins in court against Customs, and we would just incur huge lawyer fees if we chose to go down that path.

While all this was going on, Loic and Lauren were flying to join Francoise in Switzerland and asked us to go join them for 10 days. Lane felt he should stay back to continue work on Mai Tai, so I went alone. I booked a ticket to Zurich, hoping our problems with Customs would not come to a head while I was out of the country. But what is another 10 days after already 2 months?

How divine finding myself up in the coolness of the mountains, gorgeous Swiss villages and the warmth of family hugs.

We took a train from Zurich to the delightful mountain village of Engleberg. What a contrast to the deserts of North Africa and a cleansing of my head from our nightmare situation there.

Ten days flew by and once back in Tunisia, we were summoned to the Customs Headquarters, just 2 days after my return. A decision had finally been reached after waiting over 2 months. They decided that we needed to pay a fine of 1000TD (NZ$600) for entering the country illegally, to be paid to Customs, in cash, and they would then hand us back our original registration document. Well, that was well below even our best projections. Obviously, we had help from our NZ Consul General in Tunis. Thank you!

Phew!!!! At least it is over now, and Mai Tai is free again. 

While Mai Tai was impounded at the Marina, we were able to get a huge amount of work done as we were still living in the apartment. Lane was able to finish all the varnishing projects, insert the cane into the cupboard doors, run new AC wiring throughout the port side, and painted the whole interior of Mai Tai, including the ceiling panels. This was difficult to do in with the intense heat, having to work early mornings and evenings. We then had to reassemble the entire boat so we could move back on board.

We still need to get back down to Port de Peche to finish the paint job on the hull.  We have to go there as it is the only yard where Lane and I can work on the boat and do the spray painting using our spray gun and their compressor. It is very unusual to be able to do your own work in Mediterranean boatyards. Everything in Port de Peche is very basic and old, but the boatyard staff are all very obliging and happy to help.

But all went well, and we are super happy with her new paint,

We had no problems arriving back at the Marina this time and were happy to get back into our cruising social routine with our friends. Summer is approaching and many of our friends are getting ready to move towards their next cruising destination. There were a multitude of smaller but equally important maintenance tasks to do after being in a dusty dirty boatyard for so long, so there was very little down time for us. One of our major repair difficulties was replacing our jib track, which was destroyed during our storm incident.   It is so difficult to get these kinds of jobs done here in Tunisia, mainly because the local tradesmen are used to working on big old fishing boats and can’t understand the precision required for jib tracks and jib cars. However, after 3 goes at getting it replaced, we are finally all set.

We have ordered 2 new sails to be made here, so once we have those on board, we will be looking for a weather window to move on ourselves.  

On the first of June, Tunisia had a 4-day celebration to welcome in summer.

We have enjoyed our time here in Tunisia, but it will be such a relief to be out sailing again, finding beautiful anchorages and swimming in the cool clear waters as some relief from the temps we are experiencing in the high 30s, every day. here at the moment.

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 [LF1]