Morocco - Day 2
05 November 2009 | Safi,safe port in Morocco
Nasty weather system starts today
Yesterday was an interesting day. We'd arranged for Ray to dive on the propellor to remove the net at 10am and that all went well. There was a huge amount of net (about 4 metres) and it was wound around really well. Once Ray cut the bulk of it away, the rest came away quite easily. The good news was there was no damage to the prop. So, that meant we could leave Jorf Lasfar if we wanted to...and we wanted to. So, we headed up to the Harbour Master's office and while our bacsk were turned the local guard dog took a liking to us (???) and broke loose of the pine box it was in, dragging a paling along behind as it launched itself at full tilt toward us. We both turned around and yelled in our deepest tones and the dog stopped and ran off. Whew...don't think it had rabies just a bad attitude. We had left Milo on board the boat for that very reason. The next thing that happened was that another official...this time a STATE official...approached and asked to see our passports and papers so Ray went off to the boat to organise that. Meanwhile the Harbour Master took me upstairs to the office and enroute grilled me on my marital status and told me how sad he was that I was married...hmmm. It ended up costing us 6 euros for the berth for the night (hardly an excessive fee) and after changing euros to dirhams (1 euro =3D 10 Dirham) we paid the bill and left for a 12 hour sail south to Safi. We arrived at 3am this morning and are now rafted to another yacht owned by a French couple. We had to do the formalities before going off to bed. Safi is a well sheltered all-weather harbour with an interesting medina (old town) and is the centre for some of Morocco's most famous pottery. (A correction to yesterday's blog....Ray changed the fuel filter not the oil filter...for those who know this stuff)