18th May 2021, we eagerly decided to leave Portugal after we stayed 2 and a half weeks. We waited from 12pm to 2pm for the diesel, filled up and then said our goodbyes to Tia.
It was a beautiful sunny day with calm seas. But all changed in a mere couple of hours as the winds became stronger and the waves became bigger: think of 30+ knot winds and 5 metre waves. I felt extremely sick – throwing up everything I ate that day. I also couldn’t go on my shift because, everytime I moved to the inside cockpit, I kept throwing up.
So the next day we decided that we needed to change course to Marocco. The sea was rough. I tried to sleep but I couldn’t because dolphins wouldn’t let me. They like playing with the bow of the boat and that’s where my room is. I could hear them all night how they were communicating with each other which, at first, was interesting but then it became plain annoying.
On the 20th May we were trying to sea Africa but failed because there’s fog and more humidy then Europe. The ocean had also changed colour in the meantime; it went from a cyan to a dark blue colour. When we saw Africa the coast was low instead of the high coasts that we had gotten used to. We reached Agadir at night, anchored and then hoped to check in in the morning. I was on night duty from 1-4am. This time we were glad we didn’t anchor in nets again.
Day 4, we went to the marina to check in and we also needed diesel. They wouldn’t let us in the marina to get to fill up our tank. None of them spoke English so we didn’t know what was happening. Then somebody who spoke better English told us that we couldn’t go in the country as the borders were closed because of coronavirus. They also told us that they could bring us combustible in jerry cans and that there’s normally a ration for their boats of 20 litres per tank per month but we could get the whole 100 litres (for high price of course). We had no internet so we asked them how the winds are going to be. The told us it was going to be fine so we embarked on our journey.
