Tangier 35 47.040N. 5 47.857W
Persephone... Cruiser/Racer
Nigel & Karen Goodhew...
Fri 17 Jan 2020 13:12
Specifically the Moroccan city of Tangier. With a moderate 13 to 17 knots from the east, the 32 mile sail across the strait and then westward along the north African coast, took just over 5 hours, in glorious sunshine with fantastic visibility.
The North African pilot guide, recently purchased from the chandlery in Gib remains lamentably out of date, around 2010, so there was no mention of the approach to the marina in Tangier, so I had amended the chartlet using artist impressions published on the Tanja Bay marina website before we left. All that worked well and we were warmly welcomed by the marina staff, and offered an alongside berth on the reception pontoon, an hour before dusk.
The reportedly complex customs and registration procedures went very swiftly and smoothly and were followed by a police and customs visit to Persephone. All slightly unusual, but very charming.
In front of us on the pontoon, are Gus and Anneka, in their new steel cruising yacht, Gusanne. She is built to a design which echoes the traditional dutch river barges and at around the same length as Persephone, weighs in a over 20 Tonnes!
We were invited on board a couple of nights ago for sundowners, and can attest to the luxury that Gusanne offers....
So far, we have explored much of the city on foot, covering over 30Km, with two visits to the old city with its medina and kasbah. At the time of writing, I still need to find out the difference between these two.
The people here are very friendly and curious about us and our background. A defining characteristic of the English as seen from a Moroccan viewpoint is our connection with Premiership football clubs and fish and chips!
Everyone is a shopkeeper, market trader or stallholder here. There are more shops than shoppers and most people seem to have a lot of time on their hands. Life appears relaxed, inexpensive and relatively stress free.
But growth is also spectacular. The new city of Tangier is a forest of cranes and a cacophony of pneumatic drills as huge apartment blocks are being constructed in every available space.
The mosques call their faithful to prayer frequently and regularly, starting before dawn and ending at dusk. This juxtaposes slightly oddly with the nightclubs and discotheques, which start up around 11.30 pm and rock until after 3. The Clash used to rock the Kasbah, and their legacy lives on.
The east meets west feel here is very exciting. Accompanied by the exotic perfumes of cooking, spices and the bustle of commerce, it feels inevitably a world apart from Spain, even though the southern spanish hills dominate the views out to sea to the north.
Environmental concerns that populate domestic news to such a significant degree at home, have not, hitherto, reached Morocco, and to that extent, they are similar to southern Spain. The beaches are littered with plastic on both sides of the Straits of Gibraltar, and nobody seems to notice.....humanity is very much looking the other way in these latitudes.
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