01 April 2011; Agadir, Morocco.

From pilot station to pilot station we had to cover the magic distance of exactly 222 miles with an average speed of just over 17 knots. I kept the speed a little bit up to be able to go slow the last two hours, as the Moroccan coast is notorious for fishing boats that sometimes venture up to 20 miles off shore. Some of them are tunny fishers with long running nets and they tend to try to move in front of the bow as they know that we cannot see their nets during the night. That moving in front of a ships bow is quite a dangerous activity and they should not do it, but the fact that they do so does not exempt “that ship with the bow” from any blame if it runs them over. Going slow gives more time to change course, or even stop if needed. Still you do not want to arrive to late in the port and thus I arranged it in such a way that we built up a little plus in speed during the night while we were in open water and could then approach slowly to Agadir pilot station.  We were scheduled for the pilot at 06.00 hrs. with the plan to be docked by 06.30 so the ship would be cleared by 07.00 hrs. The port has a very simple entry with a 90o turn into the port entrance and then less then a mile to the dock. With all of that in mind we returned to the African continent.

Agadir Port. See the wind vane on the ship. Each line indicates 10 knots. so when I took this screen shot at 11 am. it was blowing 40 knots from the desert.

I was expecting an uneventful arrival as the weather forecast called for wind still weather and Agadir Port control indicated this as well. The pilot spoke of 6 to 8 knots of wind and brought along with him a tugboat in case we wanted to swing around in the port.  Then the fun started. By the time the pilot came onboard it was blowing 20 knots; by the time we sailed into the port 30 knots and by the time the ship came closer to the dock it was gusting to 50 knots. That is not good for a captain’s blood pressure.  However I seldom sail without a plan B in my mind and this time the standard plan B was employed namely, turn the stern into the wind and if it pushes the ship forward, stem that push by going astern on the engines. That solved the drifting issue and now I could figure out how to get to the dock by finding an angle that would not put the wind too much on the beam of the ship, but would allow a safe approach. The pilot had never heard of plan B and kept muttering “to the dock with the bow, to the dock with the bow”. When his coffee cup blew away (over the pants of the CO) he started to realize that there was a lot of wind and that a cruise ship does catch most of it. Agadir is mainly a cargo port so they are not that much used to the peculiarities of floating apartment buildings with balconies.  Although sometimes a container ship comes close it. However most cargo ships have more under water than above, so they do not drift much on the wind.

 Thus with an accelerated heart beat I brought the Prinsendam slowly alongside and kept the tugboat pushing until we had the mooring lines ashore, lots of them. The pilot promised that this local wind would be gone by 10 am and that by departure it would be calm. I sincerely hoped so.

It was so windy, that we could not set up our gangway tents, towel stations and palm tree’s.

We are now back to ports with higher tide ranges and that always gives issues with gangways. So where I know that they have them, based on passed experience, I order shore gangways. In Morocco they excel in very good ones and very long ones. So I ordered a 17 meter one (50 feet long) for 250 euro’s.  The gangway with a shore crane was waiting for us upon arrival and was hooked in without delay. At least I made the Security Officer a happy man.

Thus with bathed breath I waited for the wind to go down and I had to wait for a long time. It was not until 1 pm one hour before sailing time, that the wind finally died down to about 20 to 25 knots. Still breezy but a lot better than it had been. Now came the next challenge, to get out of the port as soon as possible, as the run to Casablanca is a tight one, as we need to go around all these concentrations of fishermen. I did not think that it would be a good idea to take the short cut through them and run a few over in the process. So I had hoped to be gone and away by 2 pm. but then no pilot. Although promised by port control that he would be there 15 minutes before sailing time, he had decided to go on to another ship and showed up 45 minutes late.  I could not sail without a pilot, as the linesmen only show up, when he calls them, and he also controls the tugboats. Thus we had to wait until he finally got off that other ship.

Then it was simple, we used the wind to blow us off the dock, swung around in the basin and raced away, dodging fishing boats for the first 45 minutes. Tomorrow it is supposed to be wind still again, so we will wait and see……….

This was my April fools day…………fooled by the weather forecast.