7. Leaving Europe

Exactly one month after the arrival in Gibraltar, we got back to our ship again, travelling via Malaga airport, then with shuttle bus directly to our marina in La Linea. We were expecting quite some work (smaller and bigger) to be finalized, main one was to mount a new wind generator on our mizzen mast. We organized an English electrician to help us with, we wanted to be sure that we will have a perfect result in order to reach energetic independency. We already have solar panels on the roof of our dock house, they produce a maximum of 270W, the wind generator should add some hundreds watt more to this.

Among others Alina did work as an interior designer and rebuilt the girls’ room. The ceiling part had to be replaced, not easy at all, I was lucky to being occupied with other stuff these days. The result is amazing, the window frame is fixed on a solid wooden plank again, and the new wallpaper is state of the art.

Many thanks to grandma and grandpa Angela and Xaver to being around taking care of the kids. Our new crew member Dani did fill in very quickly into the world of sailing ships as well, helped where ever he could, did take care of the rusty spots on deck, was and still is our prime nanny and cheered us up when we had some bad moments!

We even did some sailing these days, as we had to travel to Gibraltar to get the wind generator fixed, we motored over to Marina Bay on 18th October, the nearer we got to Great Britain the more it rained, we could hardly find the entrance to the harbour just next to the airplane runway. 3 days later we sailed back to La Linea, this time we really sailed the huge bay, slalomed around the anchored tanker and cargo ships and even spotted some dolphins.

On 26 th October we started our motor again, this time out of the bay, attacking the Straight of Gibraltar (Let me allow a comment to the naming which is misleading, it should be Straight of Tarifa, there you find the most narrow straight as you will) heading towards Tanger in Morocco. Due to tide streams and strong currents it can be quite a challenging passage, so we have chosen easy weather to getting to Africa. Weather forecasts were showing a slight easterly breeze, in the end it was not more than 5 knots, not enough for our 15-tons steel boat to get enough speed for “comfortable” sailing. The sea was flat, the motor was running smoothly, all of us wearing shirts and enjoying the trip to Africa. Already in Gibraltar Bay and then even more often outside in the Straight we spotted dozens of dolphins, playing with our ship, further away some whales waving with their tail fins. The entire crew was walking around on deck to seek for the next group of animals in and above water, sometimes someone checked the course and did some adjustments at the steering.

Some miles before reaching the Tanger Bay we suddenly faced strange turbulances on the water, steering has become a real challenge, what happened? Luckily nothing bad, “just” needed a closer look on the chart plotter and the depth sounder showing just another 10m. Later, entering the bay, we had strong current against us, more than 2 knots, this is about a third of the maximum speed our Jolly Jumper is doing under motor, we still arrived as expected at around 7pm.

Tanja Bay Marina is a newly developed yacht marina at prime location in Tanger. All the people working there, if it were the men helping you attach your boat, the lovely lady from the office, the always friendly security guys, have welcomed us in their city. Even the authorities’ officials, not always known as most open-hearted people, have made our lives as easy as they could, the same by the way was true when we left again on 1st November… The weather unfortunately was mostly terrible, and we all caught a quite nasty flew (we actually carried it over from Europe) which kept us on the boat most of the time. When it was not raining like there was no tomorrow and the wind did for once not try to push our ship on the pier, we still went for some walks. The medina, the old town, on the hill to the west is a lively, of course Arabic blended place. It has many small streets with shops of every color, many small cafes, as well as more “dark” alleys, where you may not want to walk around at night. All in all a cool place, also no problem to getting there with small kids, at least during the day. The 2 blond girls of course had been an attraction as such for the local people, many times other women have just grabbed them and kissed them, showing them to their colleagues, something you have to get used to as parents! Most of the times we stayed relaxed, just when they wanted to take pictures we intervened. It was a short, but very positive experience in Africa, the Morrocans have really gained our hearts, hope to be coming back soon!

Dolphin watch

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