To Essaouira

Tuesday
We navigated the Strait of Gibraltar this morning and this evening’s early night watch brought my first military submarine encounter which was pretty awesome.  Passage wise we realised that we and our companion yacht were flying different courtesy flags; remedied asap, apparently the Moroccans take things like that rather seriously, detainment due to flag error would be rather embarrassing.

Wednesday
Boats at sea are very noisy places to try and sleep.  When you’re on two hours on / four off you’re already conscious that it’s now or never if you’re going to get an efficient block of sleep.  There’s the engine and/or sails, Securitie announcements and general white noise on the radio, then the unidentifiable random clinks and clunks.  These cannot be ignored; the source must be sought and silenced, by use as wedges such items as towel, water bottle, tupperware, bits of card, paperback novel…. no item is sacred.

Thursday
Today I have mostly been singing a little ditty to myself: “We’re off, we’re off, we’re off in a motor yacht; come on Bavaria 39, let’s see what you’ve got!”  Given that the wind is negligible – therefore we’re on engine – we spend a significant amount of time discussing whether that’s really as fast as our companion yacht can go, and checking with their helm that they have the revs up.  An evening in Rabat last night; the marina was safely Westernised and we took up occupation in the one venue which sold wine.  A couple of us are starting to wonder if we’ve triggered tracking by our bank’s fraud team.

Friday
We’ve had continued success with our fishing rod and lures, today we even caught (and released) a seagull.  Otherwise the main entertainment has been listening to boats chatting away on our preferred VHF ship to ship channel; it’s a bizarre radio soap opera, leaving us guessing who and where they are, whether their weather information affects us, and whether it would be uncouth to join in the chat.

Saturday
We celebrated reaching Essaouira with a 4am wine and cheese party…. and awoke to discover we’d been rafted against, six deep, and no-one but us had tied shore lines.  I offered to put some on, our skipper merely said he’ll just cut them all loose if the wind picks up; for future reference, shore lines!  We’ve also had all sorts of trouble with timezones; when boat time is 1hr ahead of land time and the clocks go back, when is high water?

To Lanzarote

Sunday
I wasn’t sure what to expect with Morocco, and was tempted to stay on the boat, but I did venture out into Essaouira; the people in the fishing port were certainly very friendly.  I did not, however, partake of the food – I had a margarita on a roof terrace and that felt adventurous enough – and wise with hindsight; two of six who did eat have been struck with food poisoning.  All we can do is let them sleep, whilst taking on additional watches and endeavouring to trim off every ten minutes to dry land.

Monday
Motor sailing in 15 knots of wind, too far out for fishing boats – the only passerby is a cargo ship (and you’d be hard pressed to hit one of them) – the primary topic of conversation is shower facilities in Lanzarote.  Since we weren’t sure we could pick up fresh water on the Moroccan coast we’ve employed a shower embargo; washing up, clean hands and teeth are essentials we cannot afford to risk.  And we adopted a pet, a tame little finch joined us at lunch for tuna tartare and decided to stay until sundown, it was like something out of Disney; flying in and out of the galley, eating tuna off my fork, sitting on our shoulders; boat dog was not impressed.

Tuesday
We made it – a slightly more treacherous night entry than expected as they’ve built a new (and unlit!) marina wall since our skipper was here last – all showered and I have Vina Sol!  And it is time for a few more byes; it’s fair to say this trip has taken longer than expected, we’re down to a final five of twelve, and so far only one tipsy marina topple off a pontoon…. (and it wasn’t me!)

To be continued……

Total: 1,983 NM