Photo: breakwater at Bouregreg River entrance

It's always hard to leave the comfort of a marina berth, with power and water hook-ups and and easy access to shore. The Bouregreg Marina in Rabat is just a few years old and is kept in excellent condition, especially since the King of Morocco's boats are kept there. We knew several of the cruisers at the marina and more were arriving every day, so there was plenty of social life. But we'd done all the sightseeing we wanted to do, and the Canary Islands were calling.

Entering and leaving the harbor can be dangerous if there's offshore swell, in fact we know of two boats that suffered major damage doing so. Both of them tried to enter without calling the marina first, as you're supposed to do, since it's hard to judge the swell in advance when going in. Sometimes they close the harbor if conditions are bad.

The day we left the swell was starting to climb due to offshore weather far to the north, but we followed the pilot boat out past the breakwater with no problem. The nearly 500 mile trip south along the Moroccan coast and across to the Canaries was a pleasant, mostly downwind ride till our last night, when the wind died and we had to motor the rest of the way. We could see the heavy ship traffic along the coast on our AIS screen but we seldom saw the ships, since they usually divert course around us miles in advance.