Getting to Tangier from La Linea in Spain, we had to cross the busy Strait of Gibraltar, where the big tankers lie like pearls on a string on the deep-water route.
We set off a couple of hours after high tide, which gave us a bit of a little push on the way out. On the first part of the journey we didn’t have much wind. With the mainsail and parasailor up, we were sailing around 4-6 knots. As we approached the deep water route, which is about halfway down the strait, we got wind from the side and could suddenly go up to 10 knots. After a couple of hours of pretty good wind, it died down again and when there was no more wind, we took the sails down.
As we approached land on the African side, a dense fog suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Ian was sitting on deck on the front. He suddenly saw the fast ferry appearing out of nowhere about half a mile away. The boat quickly got all wet and dense. There was complete silence around us. The kids got out the fog horn and honked every few minutes. It was pretty nerve wracking to only be able to see about 10-20 meters out to each side before the sky and water blurred into one. We were grateful for our plotter that could show the location of the pier into Tangier harbor, which we approached around 4 PM. Check in at the port took at least 3 hours. Martin had to go in and show all sorts of papers and account to customs, immigration and the port authority. Later they entered the boat twice and inspected the boat and the crew. Morrocco could learn a lot about hospitality if they wanna attract more tourists.
The next day, October 15th, it was cold with a little bit left of the fog still.
We went into town and wanted to see the old town. The port’s internet was pretty bad and we had no data, so we just decided to go in there. Martin had downloaded a small section of the city map on his phone, where you could see the road structure. He thought the most winding streets must be the old part of town. That turned out not to be the case. The winding streets were a neighborhood that looked very local and somewhat rough.
At one point we came across some kids just coming out of a football field after practice. They immediately saw that we didn’t belong and started yelling things at us. We tried to ignore it and walked on, but they followed us and some of them started throwing stones at us. Luckily there were some men standing on a street corner who saw it and made the kids stop. They advised us to go away from there and into the tourist areas.
We took a taxi back where we were definitely snared with the fare much more expensive than in Spain. Martin went to a hotel and got a tourist map which led us to the old town. Inside the old city wall there were really narrow streets, many tourists, restaurants and local traders exactly as you see in the tourist brochures.
We had lunch at a restaurant with a terrace and had a nice walk. It lightened the mood after the unpleasant experience of the morning. Back at the port we had coffee/ice cream by the promenade overlooking the beach with camels and horses.
All in all a slightly disappointing experience being in Tangier.
Today we spent the day getting ready to move on. Next stop is Las Palmas in Gran Canaria, which requires a sail of about 7 days at sea non-stop. On this route there usually is good wind from behind, but this particular week, we’re gonna have a mix of upwind and no wind.
