After a three hour process with immigration and customs to clear out of Tangiers four sailboats all left within a few minutes of each other, all bound for the Canary Islands.  It was nearly noon and the wind had kicked up to 20 kts at the marina entrance and 25-35 kts blowing in from the Strait of Gibraltar.  Heading due north from the marina I was climbing and crashing down on the big waves the wind had created.  That lasted for a couple of miles to the point where we could all turn due west and the winds from the Strait were at our sterns. At that point I started with 2 reefs in the mainsail and no genoa. That still pushed me along at 6-7 kts.  After another 7 nm or so we could turn southwest and eventually out of the main easterly wind stream.

From there it was about 600 nm to the southern end of Lanzarote Island, one of the northernmost of the Canary Islands, where I had booked a berth at Rubicon Marina.  I soon lost sight of the other boats as they chose their own course and angle to the wind.  The passage south lasted about 5 days with variable winds on the stern, sometimes disappearing so I occasionally used the engine. There was a fair amount of north-south shipping traffic and occasionally other southbound yachts would pop up on the radar and AIS.  At one point along the coast of Morocco I was intercepted by a small, fast fishing boat that just came by to wave hello.  I was wary they might have other intentions.

The day and night before arrival at Lanzarote the wind picked up considerably to the point where I had to slow down so I would arrive at Rubicon in daylight.  I furled the mainsail and was only using a reefed genoa. That still pushed me along at 5-6 kts. The timing worked out fine, arriving at Rubicon late morning.  Even in the relatively protected marina the wind was still 15-20 kts making docking a little tricky – help from the marina’s marineros to handle the mooring lines was definitely needed.

Rubicon is a great marina with wide berths and waterways (fairways) between pontoons.  I expected that.  What I didn’t realize is that Rubicon marina is in the middle of large resort complex, generally known as Playa Blanca, with dozens of restaurants and bars, endless shops, luxury 5 star hotels, and of course, mobs of tourists drawn to all that. I suppose it is the beginning of the season where Europeans, the English especially, seek a sunny refuge from increasingly dreary homeland weather.  Among boat owners, I met a few who brought their boats into Rubicon for the season, intending to leave them here for 6 months or more.

I rented a car for a couple of days to have a look around.  The island is basically a volcanic desert with only a few places where they appear to have successfully turned the volcanic soil into something fertile.  I drove passed an area with vineyards spread across a broad valley.  The largest natural attraction on the island is Timanfaya National Park in the center of the Montanas del Fuego, a still active volcanic area with vast sharp-edged lava flows.  At the tourist center at the top of a hill they were cooking chicken for the restaurant over an active thermal vent.  Along the coast there are large salt recovery ponds that have been in operation for a long time. 

In addition to the replacing the failed Iridium GO on the boat I also has some work done to repair damaged places on the luff tape of the mainsail.  I now think rolling the sail on the boom stresses the points on the luff tape at the battens because that’s where the damaged occurred.  There are many benefits to a boom furler for the mainsail but fairly careful rolling and reefing is necessary to get an even rollup and protect the luff tape.

Given the touring and repairs, I’ve stayed in Rubicon a few days longer than originally anticipated. I plan to make the next leg all the way to Cabedelo, Brazil, a great circle distance of about 2500 nm, maybe 20-25 days en-route. I plan to pass just west of the Cabo Verde Islands. In the event a tropical storm pops up after I leave Lanzarote it will give me a place to seek shelter at Mindelo until the storm dissipates of move on.

The weather for a direct passage from Lagos to Tangiers was not favorable with strong easterly winds that would be blowing almost directly on my bow.  The distance was also not favorable, about 160 nm, more than a day’s voyage.  I always plan the timing on passages to arrive at a new port, marina, or anchorage during daylight hours.  This always it makes it easier to maneuver the boat but also, if it’s a marina, the office may have limited opening hours. A 160 nm passage is about 1.5 days so no assurance I would get to Tangiers when they were open (although they claim 24/7 access).

For these reasons I decided to break up the trip into 2 legs: the first a short leg of about 40 nm east to an anchorage in a bay at the beginning of the boat channel leading to Faro, Portugal.  It was a secure anchorage with good holding in heavy sand.  I needed that holding.  The next day the wind blew at 20-25 knots most of the day, the edge of the stronger wind flow to the soutIh in the Strait of Gibraltar. There were other boats also taking shelter there for the same reason. I was treated to a great sunset at that anchorage.

There were fishermen in small boats working these waters.  I’m always wary of where they drop their nets, concerned my boat might swing at anchor into one of their nets and foul the prop.  However, they set the nets in the evening away from the boat, and picked them up in the morning before I got going so there were no issues.  I’m sure they would not like to lose a net to my prop, either.

I spent 2 nights in this anchorage until the easterlies in the Strait abated, then set off in the morning for an overnight run that would get me to Tangiers during daylight hours. It was a long night with only occasional sleep as I avoided the heavy east-west ship traffic.. 

One possible consequence of the wind dying down with a high pressure system is fog, and that’s what I got, really dense fog. I passed fishing boats that marked as targets on the radar that were only a few hundred meters away yet I never saw them.  I could barely make out the yellow channel marker near the entrance to Tangiers harbor, visibility only about 100 meters. The turning points around stone jetties to the marina entrance were equally obscured, but I finally got a bit of visibility as I turned to the marina entrance. 

The Tanja marina reception pontoon where I needed to tie up the boat to clear-in to Morocco, which turned out to be a multi-hour process, was already full of boats waiting for the fog to lift. They didn’t allow boats to raft together on the reception pontoon so I had to anchor outside the marina entrance until they left, which turned out to be late in the afternoon.  These boats appeared to have radar, and I assumed modern chartplotters, so I was puzzled they wouldn’t venture out in the fog, the fog I had just navigated for several hours getting into Tangiers. Everyone has their own personal safety criteria on the water, which is OK. I’m an instrumented-rated pilot accustomed to flying through clouds where I can’t see anything.  That’s a 3-dimension navigation problem.  A boat on the water driving though fog is a 2-dimension navigational problem – inherently easier – so I guess my criteria for safe navigation on water are different.  Of course, when flying in the clouds a pilot has air traffic control watching and controlling flight paths so collisions with other planes are avoided. No comparable thing exists on the water; you’re on your own avoiding collisions in fog.

Morocco does not permit drones in their country so they confiscated one of my drones while I was there (the cheap one, a sacrificial drone I guess, I didn’t tell them about the expensive one). “Sacrificial” in the event they refused to return it, but they did return it when I left so it was not a problem. It just introduced more bureaucracy into the clearing-in, clearing-out process.  The clearing-out process was also a multi-hour ordeal, with a search of everyone’s boat that was more thorough than the search on arrival.  They even brought out a drug-sniffing dog that refused to get on my boat, even when they provided him with a ramp to walk up through the gate in the safety lines.  The dog apparently spent 5 minutes inside another boat of a sailor I got to know while in the marina.

I only spent 4 nights in Tangiers, didn’t take any side trips – I’ve been to Morocco twice before.  To get a break from the boat, and a long hot shower, I did spend one night in a little hotel in the old city near the Kasbah. I had a great dinner with lamb couscous at a nearby restaurant. The hotel was a classic setup with a narrow staircase winding its way up around a small inside courtyard to a handful of individualized guest rooms. My room, which had an outdoor terrace filled with plants, provided a great view overlooking the city and harbor. It was a nice break from sailing.

After months at sea level preparing my boat and sailing across the Atlantic it seemed like a visit to a mountainous country like Switzerland would be the perfect counterpoint. 

There is a group of pilots who have flown small planes around the world known as Earthrounders (www.earthrounders.com).  Formed to 2000, the associated website is fundamentally a registry of such pilots who have chosen to notify Earthrounders of their accomplishment.  Every two years Earthrounders have reunions which thus far have occurred on all continents except Antarctica.  The most recent reunion was scheduled for September, 2020, but the pandemic caused it to be postponed twice.  If finally took place this year in Chateau d’Oex, Switzerland. Unfortunately, the dates conflicted with my sailing schedule so I couldn’t attend.  Instead there was a “pre-earthrounders” get-together at the chalet of Flemming and Angela Pedersen on the mountainside above the Swiss village of Champery. In addition to Flemming and Angela, the group included Thom Kane and Veronica Baird (also sailors), Patrick Elliot and Linda Walker, and Claude Meunier, the founder of Earthrounders. 

Although the weather in Switzerland was cool and rainy, for me it was a welcome break from the heat and humidity I had been living with since picking up my boat Phywave in Baltimore on June 1.

I spent three fairly indolent weeks in Lagos, relaxing, eating too much, and listening to street music. The first week was mainly occupied with boat maintenance items – an engine oil change done by Sopromar Marine Services adjacent to the marina and buying a few items in their well-stocked chandlery I decided I needed after a month at sea crossing the Atlantic from the US.

I rented a car for a day and drove a loop through the Agarve.  The first stop was Ponta de Sagres, sometimes called the “End of the World” because it’s the most southwestern point in Europe.  Nearby is Cabo de Sao Vincente, the first Portugal landfall I saw as it emerged through the fog as I arrived from the Azores. From there I drove north to Aljezur, then east on winding roads through the mountains toward Monchique, then south to the vineyard country around Estomar.  I stopped at Quinta dos Vales winery, one of the largest and most well-known wineries in the Algarve to taste some of their reds.  The vines were incredibly dried out; I’ve never seen anything like it in the many vineyards I’ve visited over the years.  This winery is curious in that the grounds are populated with a wide array of odd, mostly fat, statues of animals, and a few abstracts. From Estomar I drove back west along highway N125 to Lagos.

If you’re in Lagos it’s easy to take a boat excursion by one of the many tour companies operating out of the marina to see the many waterfront caves that are found along this part of the Algarve coast.  There are hundreds of such caves, perhaps the most famous being Benagil cave with its interior beach and a hole to the sky. Of course, everyone wants to see these caves so crowds of tourists in boats are inescapable.

Toward the end of my stay in Lagos I made a 5 day side trip to Switzerland to visit pilot friends who have also flown small planes around the world (Earthrounders).  I’ll make a separate blog post about that trip.

My next stop is Tangiers since the marina at Rabat, actually a more favorable stop in Africa, never responded to my emails inquiring about berth space. Gale force easterly winds routinely blow through the Straits of Gibraltar so it will take some weather planning finesse to get into Tangiers without driving straight into such winds.

I woke up to rain and cool temps this morning after arriving in Lagos, Portugal, Europe, yesterday, September 11, the first continent I planned to visit.  The last few days of the passage here were not satisfying, mostly with light and variable winds not suitable for sailing so a lot of motoring was needed.  Occasionally the wind would kick up to 9 or 10 kts, from a useful direction, so I’d set the sails and enjoy sailing for a while but after a few hours the wind would die again and the sails would come down rather than having them flog around in the gentle breeze.

Crossing the very busy shipping lanes that run north and south along the coast of Portugal in the middle of the night was a new experience. Amazingly, courses and positions were coordinated with very little ship-to-ship communication.  I’m not sure what the big ships made of Phywave but my AIS transmission would have given them all the details. The AIS electronics automatically use the course and speed of other vessels, and Phywave, to determine whether there is a possibility of a collision, noting each vessel as “safe” or not. For that reason, it’s important to maintain course and speed so that if any vessel is making adjustments to avoid me, those adjustments will be effective.  That said, there still are what I consider tight spacings, like a 400 meter long container ship that passed across my bow only 1100 meters away at 1 a.m. Amazing to see this ominous black wall of a ship right in front of me.

Passed the shipping lanes I was faced with a fog bank just as dawn was approaching.  I was particularly concerned about small fishing boats near the coast that wouldn’t necessarily have AIS or radar, and just be presented to me as blips on my radar. The fog burned off and lifted just as I was rounding Ponta de Sagres for the turn to the ENE and Lagos. Though I was tired the remaining 15 nm to Lagos was easy, still no wind, so motoring.

I was given a convenient berth in the large Marina de Lagos, and of course the first night went out for steak dinner and caesar salad – definitely miss having fresh greens on board. Following dinner I wandered into the narrow streets of the old section of Lagos, still lively and vibrant with the sidewalk restaurants full of people at 10 pm, and street musicians in the little plazas.  As I came around a corner a trio was playing “Country Roads” for a large crowd, some dancing, everyone singing along. It was good to get out, just walk around and see people enjoying life, after being confined to a 41 foot long space for the last 10 days.  In all, a great night out for my arrival.  I guess civilization does have some things to recommend it.