First time in Morocco
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We decided to head for Melillia, a Spanish enclave on the North Moroccan coast and approximately 90nm due South of Almerimar. An overnight night passage, which started with a quite brisk close hauled sail, although it only lasted a few hours. The rest of the night was pitch black, with the odd shooting star and a few dolphins sweeping in. Due to encountering some favourable current, we arrived outside Melillia port entrance earlier than planned, but it was still dark. So we waited until daylight before entering and called up on the usual VHF CH9 (no English, only Spanish or French spoken this time!!). There were numerous officials on the quayside making out the marina was full for the next 3 days unless we were in the Regatta! We weren’t, so where could we go? By now it was becoming obvious that I was tired, with little patience! Anyway, we were advised that it would be okay to go and anchor outside the harbour, which we duly did. The 3 days only turned out to be one, as on the second day, a Spanish equivalent of our lifeguard came out on his jet ski to advise that the weather was getting bad (which only turned out to be swell) and we were to go into the marina. Somehow, a berth was found for us in between the racing yachts and all was well!
We had arrived at the start of the annual Melillia Regatta (something like Cowes week, but on a smaller scale). Actually, it turned out to be rather fun as we saw some of the yachts racing and there was a good ‘buzz’ about the place. One of the yachts racing in the cruiser event, was Waterhoven a Moody Eclipse. We knew it’s UK owners, Peter and Romey, but has since been sold and apparently now resides in Benalmadena, Spain. It’s still not a good boat to race and apparently some of the racing participants were getting really fed up, after having to wait nearly 1.5 hours for it to finish and before the afternoon’s racing could commence.
Michael played a
valiant part too! A racing yacht retired with an injured skipper, (he crushed
his finger on a winch) and was subsequently escorted to hospital. After seeing no less than 10 people
trying to moor up his 46ft yacht, Michael could watch no more.........armed with
very little Spanish, but with practical ‘knowhow’ he managed to co-ordinate
all present to attach lines in various places, pull and hold them when told and
within minutes the boat was safely tied up. He even told off a Guardia Civil
official who was about to let out a line without being told (one doesn’t usually
mess with the Guardia Civil!).
Anyway the injured skipper’s daughter thanked Michael and handed over 2
beers. A few hours later, this was
followed by a bottle of wine by a very thankful and ‘mended’
skipper! Melillia is a little gem of a place, a semicircle of 12 sq km and has the ‘old’ town with a highly complex multilevel fortress that juts out of the sea and the ‘new’ town, a broken grid of streets and 900 Modernist buildings. Melillia is equally divided between Christian and Muslim, so we found few locals wearing shorts!
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