Rabat to Arrecife

My sister did a "brilliant" move: not only did she leave the passports that they used to enter Morocco on the boat, she also left the documents for the rental car in the same bag. The latter led to a lucky incident while we were driving. Diego was following me, and not being sure what the speed limit was, I was going 70 in 60 km/h zone. However, only their car was stopped. Julia explained to the officer that all documents were on a boat in Rabat, and to our amazement, the guy let them go with "watch your speed". Diego later opined, "in Canada, you'd be arrested, in Colombia you'd end up paying $1000, and here the guy just trusted us." In any case, they had to follow us to the boat in order to get the documents and as a perk we ended up having dinner together.

Formalities

In the morning Mark took the kids to get groceries and I walked over to the police department to see what needed to be done to check out of the country. "It's pretty straightforward, but you need to plan on an hour, just pull up to the dock here." I thought they were kidding, but in any case, we didn't have a choice, so after we said good bye to Julia, Diego and the kids we motored over to the other side of the marina. The jetskis were not yet active, so it was pretty easy to dock.

They were not kidding about taking an hour. There was whatever back office stuff (did they call the king?), then a big black dog came aboard to smell out whatever he is trained to find (he was disappointed). Then the woman from the customs and the police chief boarded Salty Ginger to do an inspection. They opened a couple of drawers, the police chief remarked "c'est magnifique de vivre ici! c'est la vie!". Then finally our passports were returned to us and we could leave the dock.

We went through the Bouregreg river without hitting anyone, but once we were outside in the ocean, there was absolutely no wind, so we started motoring. Within half a mile we were absorbed by fog. It was just like what we experienced in Maine: 100 meter visibility and fish traps that we had to go around. Not my favorite type of fun. There was one big difference: it was warm!

Damn garbage

After lunch I took a quick nap, mentally preparing for the night shift. That felt nice. All relaxed I came up on deck, and suddenly the engine made a funny noise, changed its sound and our speed got halved. I suspected we hit something even though nothing was visible. In reverse, the engine made the whole boat shake. We definitely cannot continue motoring like that, and we surely cannot enter a marina! Luckily we were already outside of the fog, the sun rays pierced clear blue water and the swell was minimal. There was only one way forward: someone (the captain) had to dive to see what was happening.

A huge piece of plastic, looking like a sack for something industrial, was wrapped solidly around the propeller. I got gloves, a mask and on the 3rd attempt I was able to free the propeller. Doing this in any sort of swell would have been very difficult. I could get enough air to reach the prop, yank on the stupid bag and come up to breathe. Later in the evening the propeller hit a rope! This time diving was not necessary to free us off this garbage.

Leo got seasick and barfed, but kept being in good spirits. Peter fed his dinner to the fish as well. Mark didn’t eat much and was “a little queasy”. I was the only one who was not affected by the rolling of the boat too much. And I was hungry!

We went under motor until 4am when finally enough wind filled in for us to be able to move faster than 2 knots. It’s a great feeling to be able to shut off the engine and move without the loud noise that it makes. There is still plenty of noise from the wind, the rigging, the water, but it's different, and doesn’t make it too hard to fall asleep. Usually.

Towards the end of my shift, I raised the larger foresail and then we furled the mainsail so that it wouldn’t interfere with the code 0. The wind almost dead behind us, we were in the Portuguese trade winds and the Canary current which were carrying us directly towards Lanzarote.

The second day of our sail was rather uneventful. We tried to fish, but were not lucky. Kids and Mark were still feeling a bit seasick, but despite that, everyone was quite upbeat even if they slept 16 hours per day!

At 11pm, as we were quite far off the African coast, I was watching a fleet of fishing boats. At least they had lights, because they were not beaming their position through AIS. And then I felt a jerk, as if we hit something soft. Indeed, the speed through water went from over 5 knots to 3. And then I noticed a big orange buoy that Salty Ginger was dragging through the water. Ugh. How did she find this 30 miles offshore!?

I rolled in the sail and pointed the bow into the wind to slow Salty Ginger down. I was ready to cut the line of the buoy, but I figured I should first ensure that when I do that the operation will be successful. A meter under the surface of the water I could see a thick rope, which was clearly attached to the culprit that was slowing us down. Once I started pulling on the thin marker line, it tripped the line wrapped around the keel and the entire thing started drifting away. Fine, I won’t cut the line. Maybe the owner will be able to find it…

Rolling, rolling, rolling

46 hours into our sail we were at the half way point. The wind picked up and started gusting above 20 knots. Good time to swap sails to avoid accelerating to 9 knots in the gusts. Typically, I would want to go as fast as possible so long as it's responsible, but based on our calculations, if we were to average 6 knots, we would arrive to Lanzarote at 2am. Not the best time of day to enter an unfamiliar harbor. Arriving at dawn would have been much more preferable.

On the afternoon of our 3rd day, Mark asked if we had any bread left. Of course not! Leo ate the last piece of a baguette 24 hours prior. Mark laughed, “at least I grabbed two more baguettes at the store; the kids were trying to convince me that one is enough”. Having James, our windvane, as a trusted helmsman who does not need to eat or sleep, gives us time to do other things rather than drive the boat. While the rest of the crew were napping I used the flour and yeast that Frank got last summer to make simple flat breads. Our baking capabilities are limited since the oven doesn’t really heat up that high, but using a frying pan worked very well to improve crew happiness.

Another set of boring night shifts. Given the shorthanded crew, it’s better than way, of course. In the morning the wind decreased enough that sailing under the jib alone got quite slow. As I went on deck to change the sail, I noticed a little squid that somehow landed under the forestay in the middle of the night. Salty Ginger continues to prove herself as a superior fisherman! (She caught a flying fish on the Transatlantic passage.) We tried to use the squid as bait and despite the stink that it made (which led Peter to donate his breakfast to the fish), no fish took it with the hidden hook. When we got to Lanzarote, we found another squid and a flying fish on deck!

I finally finished Stefan Zweig’s book about Magellan and switched over to the book about German expeditions to the poles that my German teacher gave me with a notice “to enjoy during the hours at sea”. The reading example was finally taken up by Peter, who went through a Chekhov short story (in Russian!), which we then reread together. Leo on the contrary declared that he hasn’t yet found a book that he likes to read, and instead prefers to spend his time in the cabin “thinking his thoughts to himself”.

Arrival

On the evening before our arrival, Peter helped me switch to the smaller jib before he went to bed. It was a good decision: the wind kept getting stronger and stronger during the night. To the point where Mark realized that we would be arriving at 5am in complete darkness unless he would have shortened the sail. At 4am when I took over, I shortened the sail further. At dawn we were at the entrance to the channel into the Arrecife harbor and at 7am we were tied up at the first free dock that we could find. I wrote a short message to the marina office and immediately fell asleep.

We got our assigned spot and went to check in at the marina. A girl at the desk, clearly just started working there, did all of their formalities and to my question about where we were supposed to register with the authorities, she said "if you want, you should go to the police." What does she mean by "if"?! We just arrived from a non-EU country!!! The police office she sent us to was the wrong police office. They ended up explaining to us in Spanish where we were supposed to go. There was one issue: we didn't know how to call a cab. We talked to one cab who was passing by and he supposedly called someone for us, but after 10 minutes of waiting I did an executive decision to walk 25 minutes. Leo was not a big fan of walking under the sun, but we did finally make it to the right police while passing by a small beach.

The border control officers took their time (island time), and kind of ignored my request to call a cab. "Later, when we're done." Turned out, "later" meant that we got driven back to the town in a police car. Ok, the seats are not comfy, but how frequently does one get to ride in the back of a police van!

We were finally free to have lunch having gone through all the necessary procedures to clear into Spain!

Solar eclipse

Arrecife was only supposed to get 75% coverage of the sun by the moon, which we could easily ascertain by looking at the sun through the sextant. And I was able to figure out how to point the camera through the filters to be able to get okay shots of our closest star covered by the moon.

What I found amazingly interesting: people on other boats didn't seem to care! However, once I got one young person convinced to look through the sextant, everyone else on that boat wanted to follow suit and the captain ended up inviting me for a glass of wine. I understand that a total eclipse is a lot more fun to watch, but not caring at all surprised me.

Salty Ginger gets a break

We spent quite a bit of time doing lots of projects to prepare SG for a long stay without humans. We did end up walking over to a beach for a swim, but Peter and I couldn't find time to explore the island before our flight on Friday morning. The marina is much better protected from the ocean swell than Ponta Delgada, so I'm a lot less worried about leaving the boat there than on the Azores. And marina staff promised to regularly check on the dock lines.

There will be a next adventure. If all aligns as I hope it will, we will carry on in Februrary 2027.

Morocco by car

I haven’t read anything about Fes before we got there. Some Rabat locals were telling us, that it’s too hot to go there in the summer, but we didn’t have much choice in the timing that is tied to Salty Ginger’s schedule.

I looked at how people drive in Rabat and Sale, and thought to myself, “this is not India, I can handle this level of chaos”. Indeed, driving was not too complicated. There were occasional cars turning left from the right lane, a guy on a moped that stood in the left turn pocket and decided to go right, but I had to veer only once to avoid someone who wasn’t really paying attention.

Pedestrians are a completely different “species” compared to those in Switzerland (and a Singaporean would probably get a heart attack): people cross where they decide they need to cross, they do not expect to get the right of way on the crossing unless there is a traffic light, and that's where they abuse it. We figured out early on that we would be more likely to cause an accident by letting a pedestrian go through on a crosswalk than driving at a constant speed regardless of who was on the side of the road.

Outside of Rabat we saw donkeys going with traffic, against traffic — whatever worked. But the freeways were great! Well paved, and almost all drivers were polite and driving at or below the set speed limit. There are regular speed cameras and it seems that they have very low forgiveness threshold. It says 120 km/h, and nobody goes above that speed. There were only 2 issues: heavy loaded trucks that would go up the hills at 20 kmh and the repetitiveness of the scenery. Olive trees, desert, repeat...

Our first stop was at Meknes, one of the royal cities, with a cute historical medina. We were allowed to go into the mausoleum (once the girls covered their shoulders with scarfs that the guard skeptically provided). The royal palace requires invitation from the king, so we had to skip that.

We got to the parking lot outside of Fes too late for the shuttle that should have spared us a 15 minute walk. A guy who presented himself as a tour operator was trying to be very helpful and ended up convincing a little minivan driver to take us. How 9 people with light luggage squeezed into the car is … Moroccan.

We arrived to our riad through a narrow street and were immediately at ease. The guy greeted us with tea, had us fill out arrival papers and then brought us dishes and a knife to cut up a watermelon. The atmosphere was very pleasant and relaxing.

Fes

One has to walk through Fes old town to get a sense for it. Reading or watching videos cannot convey the entire atmosphere of the labyrinth of narrow streets where artisans are intermixed with shops, mosques, an occasional cafe as well as tiny “salon de the”.


We walked to the Blue Gate and then agreed that if we explore the city without a guide, we will miss out. Abdul, our guide, is married to a Swiss woman, and has been many times to Lenzerheide, where we love to go skiing! How did that happen?!

He walked us through the main tourist attractions as well as (perhaps a bit too many) to many artisans. We learned about the good luck of Fatima's hand and a few other Arabic ways of building cities that we would have completely missed out had we walked the streets on our own.

We saw (and smelled) the tannery that has been in operation for the last 900 years and is still using traditional methods to process and color leather. They only use traditional materials such as pigeon poop, limestone, etc to process sheep, goat, cow and camel skins, so it is all natural. That does take away the smell. In order to ensure that the outsiders could stay long enough to explain what happens in each of the huge buckets down below, the shop provides mint sprigs that we could hold close to our noses.

The leather gets transformed into goods in the same building. Poofs, belts, jackets, bags and anything and

We went to a metal working shop, looked inside the mosque that used to the oldest university in the world, a clothes shop, natural pharmacy.  For lunch he dropped us off at a restaurant and even though we expected that he would depart, he protested that he can’t leave his clients alone and there are still things to see.

Perhaps it was a somewhat cooler day (only 35C as opposed to 39C), but it was amazing that inside the narrow streets that never see the rays of sun, the temperature was quite moderate. We walked the entire day and even though we were tired, we were not totally sweaty.

Ifrane

The following day right after breakfast we drove to the national park where the only wild primates, Barbary macaques, live in northern Africa. Our first stop was utterly unsuccessful. We walked through a dry forest and the monkeys were nowhere around.

Our next stop was the tourist trap. As soon as we took the turn towards the monkey refuge, there were kids selling peanuts. Obviously because the "common" knowledge is that the monkeys don't get sick from them as opposed to bananas. In any case, a separate group of boys were selling apples. Presumably the ones we saw on the sides of the road as we were driving to the park.

I knew that it can snow in the Sahara, but what I didn't know is that parts of Morocco are high enough to be able to sustain a ski resort! In the summer is dry and hot (although much better than in Fes), but in the winter some of the roads get closed due to snow! At least if you believe the barriers.

Google Maps showed a road-side cafe that was on the way to Fes. Some people were in the mood for a coffee, so we decided to pay them a visit. The owner has a little car with which he pulled a kiosk up the mountain. The amazing thing was: he had a fabulous looking espresso machine. For the equivalent of 2.5 euros we got 2 espressos and a latte. And the coffee was great! This is not Starbucks, baby!

Back in Fes it was hot and much less pleasant than on the mountain range. Except that inside the riad it was still pleasant. We got wine, fruit and a pizza for the kids. Lovely time for everyone!

I am not sure I would have intentionally booked a holiday in Morocco, but due to a confluence of factors which led me there, we ended up discovering a friendly and fairly orderly country. Maybe we'll come back one day.

A 3 hour tour

My sister and her family landed in Casablanca Tuesday morning. Once we cleaned up Salty Ginger a bit, we needed to figure out how to plan the day. Clearly, we should show them one of the medinas, either Sale or more likely Rabat. Ultimately, we decided to cook the leftover meat and fish, so that we can feed them, and then go out into the ocean for a swim during the hottest hours before venturing into the city.

I walked over to the marina office to let them know that we were going to do a short tour in the afternoon. Turned out that we couldn't do that without the authorization from the merchant marine since Salty Ginger is a foreign-flagged vessel. How do I get that? "Walk over to the customs to get a copy of the admission form and bring it back to us, we will then do the inquiry, but it should be fast."

The customs office is on the opposite side of the harbor, and while it's not a bit marina, a 10 minute walk is required to go all the way around. The customs was staffed by a woman officer, who asked me how the passage was, whether or not we tried to fish. She was quite impressed by the photo of Peter holding the mahi mahi. By the time I got 2 copies of the document from her, the guy from Capitainerie came to this side as well and took one of them. The other one should stay on the boat. OK... "I will let you know when we get the Authorisation Temporaire."

After lunch I walked over to Capitainerie. "Here are 4 copies of the authorization. One for you, one customs, one for the police and one for gendarmerie." All of them had the official stamp and the authorization was through the end of August! "Oh, and before you go, you have to pay the marina fee, and you need to fill out the passenger list." The new arrivals were entered into the system with photos of their passports.

We were told to motor across to tie up at the fuel dock, from which the offices are easily accessible, and check out. Motoring was easy enough, but tying up was quite a different affair. The jetskis pulling in and out presented an unpleasant obstacle and the guys running the whole show were sure that I could maneuver Salty Ginger into a parallel dock with 2 meters clearance. I wavered at first, but in this part of the world this is a clear sign of weakness. You have to mark your presence and show no fear. We managed to tie up without hitting anything, even if it was not entirely graceful.

When I stepped off, a marina person handed me 2 copies of the passenger list: one for the police, one for gendarmerie. But the woman at the customs wanted a copy of that too. Fine. The officer at the gendarmerie asked me why he was getting the original: shouldn't that stay on the boat? "But they are all identical", I said. I thought I was done, but the police chief asked for all passports of the new arrivals. Back to the boat, bring the passports to the police. He made photocopies of each passport and on each photocopy wrote the Moroccan admission number from the stamped visa. Great! We were finally done with the formalities! "Pull up to the dock when you come back and check in with us," said the police chief.

Getting out of the harbor involved retracing the steps that we took to get in, which feels like playing a computer game. Level 1: go through the field of kayakers who stop suddenly and then start pedaling in a totally new direction. Level 2: the manually operated "ferry boats". Level 3: the swimmers while a jetski is making circles around us (presumably trying to spray us). We made it out!

Curiously, the water temperature outside of the river was 3C warmer than inside! Anton was mentioning that when he went swimming in the morning the water was quite refreshing. A difference between 22C and 25C is indeed noticeable. The major inconvenience was the swell. With no sails set the boat was rolling to the right, to the left. Pause and repeat. Swimming in the water it was very pleasant as the waveslifted and dropped us.

Once my youngest niece started to get seasick, we cleaned up the floaties and dragged the 3 oldest kids through the water on the inflatable until we go to the mouth of the river.

Docking at the police dock was almost impossible for the same reason: jetskis all around. On top of that all the kayakers were being dragged in. I decided not to wait for an opportunity and instead "violated" the requested protocol by docking first and visiting the police later. The lone guy at the police station just asked if everything went well and showed no more interest in generating more paper trails. Thank god! We already spent almost as much time doing that as swimming.

Rabat

As we were told to expect, Rabat is a completely different city from Sale. It's a lot cleaner and more touristy. As a result, the number and diversity of souvenir shops is almost overwhelming. We took a row boat "ferry" to avoid a long walk over the only bridge.

After a short walk through medina, we ended up at the old fort at Kasbah of the Udayas that offers a lovely view of the ocean, the beaches and Sale.

We crossed the old town in search of a cafe for lunch, looking at the shops and cats that laze around.

After lunch we walked through a park and let Leo burn some energy by climbing on a playground. Being close to the ocean, is it that hot, so walking around is not unpleasant.

After walking again through the busy streets of Medina and getting some souvenirs we landed at a cafe to enjoy mint tea and then made our way back to the river to take the row boat back to Sale. Quite a nice day being tourists the way most people imagine it.

Salé

 One thing that we didn't miss on the islands or during passages is mosquitoes. As a result we didn't bother closing the hatch with the netting and were woken up in the middle of the night by the nasty creatures. Leo got it much worse than anyone else and his skin was covered by red spots which we tried to soothe with Benadryl.

Our goal for the day was to explore Salé, the town north of the Bou-Regreg river, and its medina. The town walls are very well maintained and look "too new" to be authentic.

Inside the walls the quality of upkeep of buildings and streets varies. Some streets are nice and clean, and then a few steps later one finds an area once occupied by a building that is filled with trash.

Through the central streets spreads a central market which blends into Kharazzine, an endless collection of stalls that sell pretty much everything. We started the walk by trying a prickly pear from a vendor. He was cutting off the ends of the fruit and the customer would then take the flesh. Quite yummy and refreshing.

Deeper in the market we found pretty much everything one could need: spices, breads, sweets, fruit. Then there is a street with clothing and shoes.

Further on we saw fish vendors. Some were squatting and cleaning squid and fish, flushing it in the bucket of water. The smell was a bit overpowering. A few steps further there was a meat stall, then a stall selling live chicken, the next one with eggs, and then one further down hoofs of (we're guessing) cow and goats. And then we also found little chicks.

We exited the medina and went to a Syrian restaurant for lunch. We thought we were ordering somewhat conservatively: appetizers for 3 to share and a family meat platter to share. For the equivalent of 45 USD we got soooo much food that we had to take more than half of it back to the boat.

On the way back we did a small tour through Medersa Merinide, a former boarding school that operated for six centuries until 1927. The students were expected to first master Koran and then would get instruction in science, medicine and philosophy. The tour guide spoke French slowly and clearly, so that even Peter could understand quite a bit about the history of ornaments that cover multiple epochs.

And the view of the surrounding area from the roof terrace is lovely!

Back on the boat we had a siesta and then decided to go for a swim on the beach. The number of people on the beach and in the water was astounding! So we only waded through the water and then walked back along the beach. It was curious observe people. Boys & men do not differ from what one would see in the Western world: long shorts, no T-shirt. Women had more of a diversity: some wrapped fully (although we didn't see any niqabs), some in shorts and T-shirts. Not a single swimsuit. Many families had a serious setup: a table surrounded by chairs, and it was clear that they spent the entire day on the beach.

At the marina we met a British couple, who remarked that we were brave to fly the American flag off our stern. "When you get to the Caribbean, you shouldn't do that, cause people will not be nice to you," said the woman, who is originally from Colombia. It's nice to think that we're detached from politics while on vacation, but it's not entirely so. They also explained to us why the marina is so safe: one of the piers is reserved for the royal family, and even though most of their boats left for Tangiers, the guards are around at all times.

Not surprisingly, nobody was hungry at night. We chilled on the boat listening to the live music from the  nearby bar. It is quite hard to describe what we heard. There were a bunch of percussion instruments, something that sounded like violin and a singer. Maybe there was something bass-like as well, but it wasn't the dominant force in the monotonic cacophony. The violin typically used one or two notes, sometimes it would go extravagant and go a fifth up from the dominant. The soloist was not very generous in his vocal range either, but was quite engaging and would frequently inject "hey" or something along those lines. At the end of one of the songs they played a loud neighing sound. Peter and I started laughing. And then they sang Happy Birthday. Over the same general 2-3 note violin accompaniment and interjections like "tschi-tschi". I guess Saturday night was the night to celebrate birthdays, cause we heard the song at least 5 times. The singing wrapped up shortly after midnight as we were falling asleep.