From : Casablanca   To : Las Palmas   Via : Essouira

Big day. Camelia celebrates her 36th birthday on the middle of the ocean. She starts her birthday with sleeping. and I do my watch for the next 4 hours. During my watch we get a securite message on the vhf. Four sailing boats are slowly moving and have no engine running. It are the four ships Camelia saw few hours ago. We receive an email with the position of Oscar. They are about 150 miles ahead of us. Suppose they also go on engine as there are no winds at all. We will go to Essouria to see if we can take some fuel there. We should be there around noon.
When we arrive, we see a Mobil sign on port side and want to go there. From both port and starbord side people shouting to us and indicating that we should go to berth next to some other yachts. A Morocan guy is helping us with the lines and offers to buy diesel. We give him money and the jerrycans and he gives his personal card. A marine officer comes on board and need to make notes into the book. He wants to know everything from us. Where we come from, where we go, married or not, children or not, names of  both fathers and mothers. It seems he is having some difficulties with countries and places. Get the idea that he has no idea where Romania is and when he asks Camelia if Giurgiu is Georgia. This takes 15 minutes. The officer is very friendly. The guy to whom we gave the jerrycans comes back rather quickly and tells us that we need to do custom clearance at the customs. We do this and than leave. The guy who helped us is asking some candies and drinks for his kids. We gave him a couple of bottles and chocolate and around 14:00 we are back on the ocean.
We receive an email from Oscar. They are about one day ahead of us, but only making 1 knot per hour. There is totally no wind. There is a good chance we will catch up with them.