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| Roger's best catch ever! |
FRIDAY 20 JUNE 2008
We left Smir about 8.30 with Tudor and Barbara after checking out with immigration. We motor-sailed and started the water maker. It didn’t work at first and Roger had to blow water through the outlet, as there was a blockage because it hasn’t been used since last September. It had been a cloudy start to the day but soon the sun came out and it was lovely and warm. We were able to sail from about 12 p.m. in a flat sea, but had to put the engine on to tack away from the land. The wind died so we motor-sailed the rest of the way. Roger fished again and had his best catch ever – a 20 inch bonito, large enough to feed 4! He gutted it and I marinated it ready for tonight. A pod of dolphins came to play with us for about half an hour, we saw a sun fish and a very large turtle. All this against the magnificent backdrop of the Rif Mountains.
It can’t all be plain sailing, and we had a couple of technical problems apart from the water maker. The oil pressure gauge starting vibrating back and forth very quickly and eventually vibrated near the low mark, although there was plenty of oil in the engine. Roger was worried it could be a blocked filter so we kept monitoring it. The autohelm started freezing every time we opened the water tap! We had to turn the autohelm off and back on to get it to work. The C-Map on our chart plotter was about ¾ mile out as we neared El-Jebha and showed us on land!
We moored in the small fishing harbour against the Fisheries boat. Two Immigration Officers came on board and took ages to complete the paperwork and wanted to know very detailed information, even what make our VHF was! I asked if we could take our boat round to the next bay for the day to swim, and back to El-Jebha for the evening. I was told this was not permitted. We could anchor in the bay but would not be able to come back. The area is very tightly controlled because of drugs and illegal immigrants. There are even manned sentry boxes on the hill looking out to sea. Kif is one of the main crops cultivated in this area.
Tudor and Barbara arrived about 7.30 p.m. and had had the same problem with their oil gauge! Very weird – it reminded us of the film Wolfcreek.
The four of us had an excellent meal on Susannah and all agreed the marinated tuna was the best we have ever tasted. The village boys kept asking for Bon bons and when we said we hadn’t got any, they asked for whisky and cigarettes!
El-Jebha Port Fees: Free, no facilities
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