I am in the cockpit, it’s the morning of the second day of a three day passage from Rabat to Agadir. We are sailing slowly, pushed by a light wind and rocked by a gentle Atlantic swell. The children are with me, eating soup for breakfast! Martin’s sleeping (it’s my watch). Life is good, sometimes sailing can be like that. So this has inspired me to write to you for the first time in ages, sorry about that and I promise to try to do better in the future…
So, where were we? We stayed in Al Hoceima in the Mediterranean for four weeks where we continued our “finishing touches” on Wanda (see the album “work”). There I met and became friends with Hanan – how lucky to find a Moroccan girlfriend! We had some good times together at her house with her family, on Wanda, and at the beach with lots of kids. It was interesting to share our very different lives and we did a lot of talking.
Still in Al Hoceima, a long-awaited visit from some good friends from where we lived in France. With Muriel and her two children (very good mates of Max and Jack) we revisited our paradise, Cala Tramontana. We had a wonderful time, but not without a bit of drama…
One moonless night we were all seven of us on Wanda where we had eaten on deck, and at about 11pm we went to put the dinghy up on davits for the night as usual. Imagine our shock when we saw only a cut line dangling in its place! Someone must have swum from the beach, cut the line and stolen our dinghy complete with motor only two metres from where we sat. A bit cheeky! Martin immediately pulled up the anchor and searched everywhere from Wanda with a searchlight. Then we two women took the kayak and (bravely) searched the beaches for clues. We didn’t find anything except an armed security guard who hadn’t seen anything but did tell us where to find the nearest police station. The next morning Martin and I set out. It was quite remote and we started by crossing a hill on foot to the nearest village. There we drank mint tea while we waited for the policeman to wake up. He told us that we had to go to a police station nine kilometres away in the mountains but there were no taxis. So we just stayed there, drinking more tea, until eventually someone offered to take us in their car and the policeman also gave us a translator (French-Arabic). To cut a long story a bit shorter, three police stations and 50km later we ended up in Nador where they deal with such heinous crimes, still with our poor new friends in tow. There they took us extremely seriously and we had to wait while they carried out their own investigations which involved them travelling 15 miles at sea in their big zodiac to the anchorage where they interviewed fishermen, tried to arrest somebody with a similar tender to ours, and reassured Muriel and the kids that we were safe at their police station. We persuaded our driver and translator to leave us there, after they organised us a taxi for the return trip (the translator’s cousin). We wouldn’t have managed without their help. Eventually the policemen returned at about 7pm and we could then start preparing the complaint form which we needed for our insurance. I signed something in Arabic and we left with the precious document. The taxi driver left us at our beach at about 11pm. We scrambled over rocks and Martin swam to the boat while Muriel heroically picks me up with the kayak. More than 15 hours of adventure!
The next day we took Muriel and family back to Al Hoceima for their ferry home. We had a perfect sail on Wanda that day.
We were now very limited in what we could do without a tender, so we decided to go to the Spanish city of Ceuta , on the African coast, to try to buy a replacement. On the way we stopped at the little fishing port of El Jebha, which we liked so much that we stayed there for a week. It’s a traditional little town without sealed roads or much infrastructure, with beautiful little fishing boats, lots of children and young people, but where you rarely see a woman or a girl. The people were very friendly and helpful as we have come to expect. It was the start of the holy month of Ramadan where they don’t eat or smoke from sunrise to sunset. Not really the best time to visit a Muslim country in some ways, the restaurants and bars close during the day and everything stops for two hours at sunset while they eat with their families. Often people, even complete strangers, offered to share this meal with us, inviting us to their homes or bringing food to the boat. Sometimes we accepted, but feeling a bit awkward because the meal was special for Ramadan and, having eaten breakfast and lunch, we didn’t deserve it! We were touched by the fact that many of these people had very little materially, and instead of asking us for help they would share what little they had. We ate two nights in a row with Mohammed and his family. Mohammed is an English teacher at college and a very interesting and educated man who does a lot to promote education in his community. And his wife is a wonderful cook! He took us to the local primary school the night before the first day of the school year. It was amazing to see this perfect little school in the middle of the dust and dirt and so impressive how much they can do with very little materials. The headmaster, who directs eight schools, was there working at 11pm. The next day, Jack and Max collected together some school materials and books to give Mohammed.
From El Jebha to Ceuta, a pretty Spanish city, for a change of scene. But we didn’t find our new tender here. From Ceuta we sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar and finally said goodbye to Europe.
Wow, the Atlantic Ocean! We went to Tangier, our first big Moroccan city. Tangier for me was very romantic with its ancient medina and Kasbah. It was exactly how I had always imagined Morocco – colourful, exotic and chaotic. Here Martin had the inspiration to build our new tender himself, and he immediately started on a classic little boat made from plywood and fibreglass. Also in Tangier, Martin’s mother, Erika, visited us. She sailed with us to Larache, down the coast, and then nine miles up a river to the fishing port of Kenitra. This was our first time in a river with Wanda.
Since we are on the Atlantic coast we have met quite a few other people doing much the same thing as us, and it’s very nice to meet the same boats again in different ports. The children too have met other children also doing correspondence schooling that we are sure to meet again. The boys have lost a lot of their shyness and can make friends very quickly.
From Tangier we went to Rabat, a marina between two ancient cities. Erika left us here after an excellent but short visit. The same day Martin’s brother, Peter, arrived with his two big boys. We had a lot of fun together. After they left we stayed in Rabat to finish the tender. She is very cute and practical too – you can see her in the photo album “dinghy”.
So now, still on passage from Rabat to Agadir, it’s my night watch. The wind has picked up a lot, but is still from behind us and Wanda is surfing on big waves. I think it’s time to wake up my captain…
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