The Fast and the Furious

Tuesday morning I was woken up by a police officer.

Due to the heat, Ben and I decided to sleep on top of the boat, to take advantage of the ocean breezes. Around 6:30 in the morning I was awakened by a shout from a police boat that pulled up alongside us. And then we were all arrested.

Just kidding! We had to move the boat. We were in the path of an incoming oil tanker that was coming into the harbor soon.

Tuesday was “Shiva Assar B’Tammuz”, the 17th day of the Jewish month of Tammuz. It is a fast day that commemorates the fall of the walls of Jerusalem. Combined with the heat, this did not leave us many options for day activities. What can we do in the tropics when we can neither eat nor drink?

After moving the boat and davening, we all pretty much went back to sleep. In the early afternoon, unable to force ourselves to sleep anymore, some of us began to play some poker.  We played for peanuts. Literally and figuratively. For chips we used a big bag of rotten peanuts we had bought at the supermarket, with each peanut assigned a value of 5 cents. Ben and Yoni profited.

Afterwards we took the dinghy ashore, hoping to avoid the heat of the day in an air conditioned movie theater. Many people do not watch movies during the period of the Three Weeks, which begin with the fast of Tammuz (more on the Three Weeks later), but apparently we do and we actually decided to watch the movie in order to keep fasting. The movie we watched commemorated the falls of the walls of Hogwarts, although it has a happier ending than the story of Shiva Assar B'Tammuz.


We got VIP seating at the theater for free. What VIP seating means is that you were in a balcony section with seats that leaned back, with a footrest that would pop up. I think we were upgraded for free because we were the only ones in the theater. The wall that separated the balcony section from the seating below was definitely lower than ten tefachim. Glad no one fell over!

We went back to the boat straight after, as night began to fall. We noted the fast’s end by seeing three stars in the sky. After maariv, we broke our fast on salad and pasta. Some (although not me) had some papaya afterwards. Then we played Taboo, talked, and went to sleep.

Today we are refilling with water, we refilled with fuel, getting our batteries checked, and we’re going out for our second and final day with Jerry, our hired captain. I don’t know our itinerary yet, but for days to come we have some exciting places to visit. Stay tuned! And again, photos are uploaded when we are on a better connection than usual.

THE PREVIOUS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED WITH PHOTOS.