We sailed to Rabat from Portimao on 2nd April 2026, arriving in Rabat on the 4th April after a trip of 202nm taking almost exactly 48 hours.
The first few hours were not great, but later the sea settled down and we had a decent sail, wind aft of the beam and the sea regular enough for Catherine to prepare a really nice meal of burgers, tatties and veg. By dawn of day 2 it had all started going downhill again though, with the wavs coming on the beam and the wind angle requiring motor-sailing. At some point on the afternoon of the second day the wind got up to 20 kts and the Navik stopped steering. When I went to investigate I discovered I couldn’t keep my feet as there was diesel all over the cockpit. I disconnected the navik and hand steered for a few minutes, but the weather helm was chronic so I put the autohelm on,clawed the main down and motorsailed with the genoa while I tried to clean up the cockpit. Things settled down a little bit, and at some point I put some more diesel in as our dodgy fuel gauge showed it had gone down quite a bit.
That night the sea state got worse and diesel once again appeared all over the cockpit and got spread to the companionway steps this time, making moving around pretty lethal. Catherine became very seasick, and spent the rest of the passage lying transverse in the forepeak unable to take any further part in the voyage. I cleaned up again and clung on, Avy-J rolling violently in the short period beam sea as we negotiated our way through the nose to tail Morroccan pelagic fleet slowly trawling across our path while dawn broke about 30 miles from the Moroccan coast. Luckily these big boys had AIS so were relatively easy to avoid, unlike the host of randomly maneovering smaller boats that subsequently appeared.
First sight of Morocco was a big sail-like structure, obviously enormous at a distance of 20 miles. We later discoved it was the Mohammed VI tower, Africa’s 3rd-tallest building. As we approached the coast the sea calmed down, an about half a mile off we hove to and called rabat marina on Ch10. They advised us to wait until half tide and said they would call us when we could enter the river. Catherine was a bit more on the bal now the motion had mostly stopped, and we cleaned jup the boat and awaited the call. About 1pm we entered the outer harbour then the river, crossing the green bit on the Navionics chart. There was no onshore swell, we showed at least 1.5m under the keel at the shallowest part and the sun shone brightly on the mass of small boats, swimmers, rowing ferries and fishing boats that crowded the channel.
We pulled into the arrivals pontoon just before the entrance to the marina and completed the entrance formalities before being directed to our berth. Avy-J had sailed to Africa, her first intercontinental passage.