Smir - 25th June

Osprey
John Bowering
Thu 25 Jun 2009 17:57
Yesterday was not the final entry - maybe today. Yesterday Charles was off sightseeing in a taxi that spent more time broken down that moving! In the end, as Charles had hired him for the following day to get the Tangier, he refused to pay him unless he turned up in the morning - must have been an amicable day all round. He also found that on arrival at his destination someone - Smir Port, Ahmed, Mohamed, Allah or one of his cronies, had arranged for an expensive licensed guide to meet him on arrival and duly conducted him to all the shops at which he had arranged a commission for himself. Charles being a fairly thrifty fellow was less than amused with all this by the time he got back to Osprey at 1900. As we had agreed to go out to dinner in the marina, his humour slipped even further when he found that he was the only person with the means of paying for the meal.

After the fire and strong winds yesterday we decided to turn Osprey around this morning before Charles left for the airport at 0900 - so at 0700, having finally raised Charles with a rendition of Rule Britania, we got the tent down and singled up the ropes ready for the move which involved laying the anchor to hold us off the quay. Yesterday we had been congratulating ourselves that Charles would leave the boat with a three day record of no incidents/accidents. This was not to be as he damaged his hand whilst dealing with a recalcitrant anchor and left the boat yet again patched up and looking like the walking wounded. In some respects the move was hilarious as having let go the lines and started the engine moving us off the quay, John turned around to find he had forgotten to put the steering wheel back on (in port its removed to make more space in the cockpit). This caused some consternation but fortunately there was no wind and plenty of space so we missed all insurable assets by at least 20ft. The anchor also proved to be a problem (which we should have checked). After the voyage from Antigua when it had not been used - the clutch had stuck on and would not release and when we hauled the chain out manually we found that the motion at sea had thrown the chain around in the locker and it was tied in knots - refusing to come up the hawse pipe. Again we were able to miss all insurable assets whilst we sorted this out and eventually got ourselves into position with the anchor down and stern to the quay. In the process we managed to run one of our long mooring lines through the rope cutter on the propeller shaft and quickly reduced it to spun yarn. All this having been completed we then patched up Charles and sat down to waffles and maple syrup before wandering up the quay to see if the taxi was a runner this morning. He was there but the taxi sounded as though it had ingested some scrap iron. We have not heard of or from Charles since he got into that taxi which may or may not be a cause for concern!

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