December 2nd It was a very uneventful passage really, the Atlantic Ocean was so calm and flat, very little or no wind, just a long lazy swell that ranged from 1.5m to 3metres at the highest for a short period of time. It was no problem just a gentle roll. The worst thing that happened was that Starlet had a near miss with a fishing boat, which gave them a huge fright. The problem with the fishing boats is that they don’t expect you to be there and they are often on autopilot and the fishermen are sorting nets and fish, and not watching where they are going. Of course in the dark it is difficult for us to see what is going on even with radar. Thankfully it was a close call and no damage done.
The other thing that happened was a nutter on the VHF radio, I was on watch, Robbie was sleeping and all of a sudden the comments started. “ I am coming for you”, “Look behind you”, “ I can smell your fear”, and more. This went on for about 20 minutes or more, until I finally got a bit spooked and of course I was looking behind the boat, I locked all the doors and after it still continued, I went down to wake Robbie. I felt really bad as he needed his sleep, but I was a bit nervous. There were a number of fishing boats around us on the radar and I wasn’t taking any chances. Robbie listened to the garbage the guy was talking for a bit and then he turned on the handheld radio, and we weren’t receiving it on the handheld, which meant that it was quite a distance from us. It always seems worse in the dark!
We were approaching Agadir still in the darkness, there were many fishing boats, small and large heading out and it kept me alert avoiding them. As we came near the marina there were about 50 tiny wooden fishing boats with one or two men in them and it took some manoeuvring to get through them. At one stage there were nets with floats and I think we went right over some as they were so hard to see in the dark.
Mark and Jennifer invited us out for dinner and we went to a very nice restaurant on the edge of the marina, and had a beautiful meal. Back to Southern Star for dessert ice cream with Baileys. Robbie and Mark played around on the iPad and downloaded a new anchor alarm program so that we can take the iPad to the bedroom with us and we can check it without getting out of bed.
December 3rd. Slow, very slow, start to the morning, 2 panadol helped with the headache a bit. Jennifer was the only one who didn’t have a headache, she was sensible and didn’t indulge in so many wines last night. Robbie and I cleaned the outside of Southern Star which was covered in dust from the wind yesterday.
I went shopping while the others walked over to the huge fish markets just next to the marina. They brought fish and prawns for our dinner and I brought a pair of jeans, a shirt and a jumper for 799 dirhams or about 90 $Aus.
We took the hire car for a spin for half an hour, not far from the marina we went past the King of Morocco’s summer palace, it is huge probably on 20 acres of land on the ocean and beautiful gardens and grounds. It was very heavily guarded with armed guards every 100 metres. We figured he must be there at the moment and thought perhaps we should drop in on him for some minted tea as a delegation from the USA and Australia/NZ – but we ran out of time.
We had dinner on Starlet with the goodies from the fish market. Marks speciality of Prawn skewers and fish coated in Panko breadcrumbs, I made Caesar salad and coleslaw, it was a very nice meal. It is an American habit to eat salad first, which we did then Mark cooked the fish.