We have had an unbelievable couple of days! We met Suzanne and Jacque on the French boat Primavere who we very rudely rafted up to at 3am in the morning yesterday. Being European they didn't seem the least bit phased as they do that sort of thing all the time in Europe. We also met Bushaib, a local guy who voluntarily comes to greet the visiting yachties at the harbour, make them feel welcome, get them fuel and water, take them shopping and many other things. There is no request for gifts or money, only offers to go into his home, meet his wonderful family and be fed traditional Morrocan food. Of course, we'll pay him something before we leave but he's shown us a side of Morocco that'd been really wonderful. Yesterday we were guided through the Medina (old town), past the Potter's Quarter and the Souk (markets) to his house where we had traditional Cous Cous with chicken and vegetables followed by tea made from basic tea,mint and sugar...wonderful. What made it all the more pleasant was that Suzanne was actually an English teacher back in France so she could translate for us when my rusty old French got too much. After lunch, arrangements were made for Suzanne and I to go with Bushaib's wife and daughter to the Hammam (bath house). So off we went today with our towels and loufa mits and we felt so honoured to be invited into this traditional place for with the local women. There were three rooms of varying heat and for two hours we all (probably about 20 women of varying ages and only two tourists) sat pampering and scrubbing ourselves and dousing ourselves with mildly salty water...all naked except for our undies. Just doesn't happen in Australia. I came out with no suntan and pleasantly tired....forgot about the debacle at the Potter's Quarter so will catch up on that tomorrow.

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Yesterday was an interesting day. We'd arranged for Ray to dive on the propellor to remove the net at 10am and that all went well. There was a huge amount of net (about 4 metres) and it was wound around really well. Once Ray cut the bulk of it away, the rest came away quite easily. The good news was there was no damage to the prop. So, that meant we could leave Jorf Lasfar if we wanted to...and we wanted to. So, we headed up to the Harbour Master's office and while our bacsk were turned the local guard dog took a liking to us (???) and broke loose of the pine box it was in, dragging a paling along behind as it launched itself at full tilt toward us. We both turned around and yelled in our deepest tones and the dog stopped and ran off. Whew...don't think it had rabies just a bad attitude. We had left Milo on board the boat for that very reason. The next thing that happened was that another official...this time a STATE official...approached and asked to see our passports and papers so Ray went off to the boat to organise that. Meanwhile the Harbour Master took me upstairs to the office and enroute grilled me on my marital status and told me how sad he was that I was married...hmmm. It ended up costing us 6 euros for the berth for the night (hardly an excessive fee) and after changing euros to dirhams (1 euro =3D 10 Dirham) we paid the bill and left for a 12 hour sail south to Safi. We arrived at 3am this morning and are now rafted to another yacht owned by a French couple. We had to do the formalities before going off to bed. Safi is a well sheltered all-weather harbour with an interesting medina (old town) and is the centre for some of Morocco's most famous pottery. (A correction to yesterday's blog....Ray changed the fuel filter not the oil filter...for those who know this stuff)

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Just when we were going swimmingly disaster struck. Well...not that much disaster. We got a fishing net caught around our starboard prop. The starboard motor just came to a complete stop. The first thing we thought was that the prop had caught something but it was still dark so we couldn't check. Ray checked the oil filter and found they were gungy but that didn't improve the situation. On sunup all was revealed as the bright green chunky nylon fishing net flowed out from under the boat. Of course the problem is that we need the two motors to manouvre into a harbour and given we're looking at coming into the Canaries in the middle of 40 knot of winds, we thought that was a bad idea. So the nearest all-weather port was this one, Jorf Lasfar. There's only about four harbours on the Atlantic coast of Morocco that you can enter in heavy conditions and we had 2.5-3 metre swells sending us into the port, so conditions weren't all that light. But it's built for large commercial ships so it's deep and entry was a piece of cake. Formalities were interesing. First the Health Officer, then the harbour master, then the Customs and Immigration and then the Coast Guard. The hilarious thing was that when we tied to the dock you had to climb down a 5 foot ladder to get to us. Of course the tide kept dropping so by the time the Coast Guard got to us the drop was about 20 feet. He found his way down onto the tugboat beside us and then he jumped across to us. All were very nice and there were no problems. We'll check out the prop tomorrow and see if there's any damage once the props removed. Might have to sit out the bad weather here though and then head off to the Canaries early next week. Sigh....

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