A town to launch a thousand knob-gags,
And this schoolboy finds he doesn’t have a playmate
Flipping through the RCC North Africa pilot in advance of a trip to the cultural and colonial melting pot of the Gibraltar Strait, this schoolboy’s heart leapt at the sight of one potential port of call on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast.
M’diq!
Oh sure, whether out of cultural accuracy or political correctness it was most certainly pronounced “medeeq”, but as every schoolboy knows, one of the few things that comes close to the pleasure of a good knob gag is a lewd mispronunciation gag.
Our sexagenarian skipper had picked up some negative vibes about Tangier, a potential port of call in the Strait heading towards the Atlantic coast of Morocco, so as we discussed our intentions on the phone the week before the trip he was initially encouraged to hear my attentions were in the other direction.
His encouragement didn’t last long.
Ben: And we’ve got to go to M’diq (pronounced in correct schoolboy fashion), for the comedy value alone mate.
Skipper: (slightly forced, uncomfortable laughter) heh, heh, yyyyeeeeessss, I believe (i.e. I know damned well) it’s pronounced “medeeq”.
Ben: Oh yeah, but my way is much more fun!
Hmmmm. I guess in this life you’re either a schoolteacher or a schoolboy and I’d struck a blank with the skip. Maybe I’d have more luck with the other crew.
I found out we had two women along for the trip.
I wasn’t optimistic.
Eye contact
Okay, so the skipper wasn’t “feeling” my knob gags, but I was undaunted if unoptimistic. Squeezed around our 32-footer’s (10m) saloon table on our first night, as we pored over a small-scale chart of the Strait, I decided to test the water with my lady crewmates (you might detect tones here of why Captain Ben has remained single all these years).
Ben: Well, I’d really like to get at M’diq (pointing it out on the chart and needless to say pronouncing it in schoolboy fashion). If there was ever a town to launch a thousand knob-gags!
Female Crewmate 1: (uncomfortable pause followed by forced laughter) ha, ha, ha … (squinting at the chart) … oh yes, I see it.
Ben: (schoolboy smile and wiggle of the eyebrows) Ah, so you can see M’diq then?
FC1: (more forced laughter) ha, ha, ha … yes I can!
Ben: And without a magnifying glass … not the story of my life!
Aren’t you even going to buy me dinner first?
You can’t just go straight for M’diq of course, it’s not quite that simple. You have a bit of work to do first. But it’s worth it, I promise.
M’diq is primarily a fishing port, though it’s also home to a small number of yachts and speedboats, with the harbour conveniently located just to the south of the town centre. My slightly ageing edition of the RCC North Africa pilot notes that building work has started on an extension to the harbour with planned completion in 2012. It also points out that most Royal Moroccan Yacht Club boats have moved up the coast to Marina Smir while building work proceeds.
It turns out to be proceeding rather slowly!
Whatever state the facilities have reached in M’diq they’re principally for the yacht club members anyway. Visiting yachts can anchor or tie up only if there’s room.
The pilot guide also identifies M’diq as an acceptable port of entry to Morocco but there was some doubt about this amongst skippers I spoke to on this trip. This might be temporal because of the building work, or it may simply be a question of slickness since the facilities aren’t aimed at visiting yachts. Or it could be hazy local knowledge since so few of them bother to try. Illegal entry is called illegal for a reason and in a territory renowned for people smuggling and kif (hashish) smuggling this isn’t a place to experiment with it.
What’s good enough for the Royal Moroccan Yacht Club was good enough for us. We decided to head for Marina Smir, a ten minute cab ride up the coast from M’diq.
Your place or mine?
The previous night we’d spent in Ceuta, one of Spain’s Gibraltars on the Moroccan coastline and more Spanish than the Costa del Sol in the in-your-face kind of way that Gibraltar is more British than Royal Tunbridge Wells. I seldom had to dust off my high-school Spanish in the Costa but was dependent on it in Ceuta.
With little over ten miles to run to Smir we had a lazy start leaving Ceuta and found a good sailing breeze …right on our nose. Having motored the short schlep to Punta Almina though we were able to turn sou-sou-west, set the sails and find ourselves on a comfortable broad-reach. M’diq would soon be in sight!
As I scrambled on deck to change our Spanish courtesy flag for a Moroccan one I surveyed the coast of North Africa. My traveller’s joy at heading for a fresh landfall was tempered by the view across the land; North Africa on this April afternoon looked more like Argyll in August. Low cloud and mediocre visibility were the order of the day and it seemed to threaten rain.
The huge, curving breakwater enclosing the marina (pictured at the top of this post) is easy to spot from a distance and the pilotage about as straightforward as can be; just a single buoy to keep to port on entry which marks where the channel has silted a little and then it’s “left hand down a bit” and a lasso around the bollards on the conveniently sailboat-level visitors quay.
We’d made landfall in Morocco and were closer to M’diq than we’d ever been.
But the work wasn’t over yet.
Foreplay
The details may vary but in the less red-tape shy corners of this world you can guarantee that entry and exit procedures won’t be a one-shot exercise. Whether a triumvirate of officials descend on your boat at their convenience to plod through the paperwork or whether you plod from office to office to get through it you’ll have a chore on your hands.
The RCC North Africa pilot describes Marina Smir as a “superb marina [which] has never overcome its reputation as a smuggler’s haven where normal visitors are harassed by officials.” That suggests the reputation is unfair and, at least as far as the officialdom goes, that’s how we found it.
We ambled to the marina office where we were invited to fill in our individual entry forms while they took a few details of the boat. We were then directed to trudge round the corner to the immigration office where a jolly and slightly pot-bellied French speaking officer shared a few jokes with us while running our passports through his computer, correcting the odd bits of our entry forms for us and then stamping our forms and our passports with a proud flourish. One feels that one action is probably the highlight of his working day.
At this quiet time of the year we were invited to remain on the visitors quay overnight if we wished. This was handy as it saved us having to cast off, re-rig our lines and moor up again, something of a dismal chore when you’ve just made landfall at the end of a day’s sailing no matter how short. It also meant the shortest possible walk to the showers in the morning. It also, revealing my sad, nerdish side here, meant I could pick up the marina office WiFi from the boat.
With nothing left to do but settle in and enjoy a beer or two before finally getting at M’diq one of the girls volunteered to make a few sandwiches, clearly feeling the need for some preparatory calories first.
FC1: What do you fancy on your sandwich Ben?
Ben: Well … we’ve just arrived in a Muslim country … so … is there any of that ham left?
Oops, there goes that schoolboy again! I’d have been down for frying some bacon if I hadn’t also been down for the washing up.
M’diq’s getting hard
The anticipation was finally over, it was time for us all to finally experience M’diq. At the marina’s land entrance it was easy to pick up a cab amongst the handful of drivers lurking there, once again for a fee agreed in Euros.
With a friend of the skipper joining us for the evening we were five heading for M’diq that night, a personal record indeed and one that daunted me more than somewhat when I realised all of us were going to squash into a single cab. An aged Mercedes trundled up, driven by a cabbie clearly unfazed by such things as passengers wearing their seatbelts. Being gentlemen we gave one of the girls the front seat, a mistake we did not make on the return trip. Captain Ben may be a scrawny wee runt but the other two blokes weren’t, and my back has only just about recovered from being wedged in a north westerly fashion between their upper body masses and the other girl’s butt. Her scars from that trip I suspect may take much longer to heal.
We exploded out of the taxi as soon as we reached the town and ambled along the seafront towards the harbour to see how the new marina wasn’t progressing. A developed seafront revealed a mixture of French colonialism, Moroccan heritage and recent tourist development lining an attractive, sandy beach. The only bastion of globalisation I spotted was an expansive and largely deserted Domino’s Pizza. For a midweek evening it was buzzing with locals ambling with the family, meeting with friends or playing with their kids. It was pleasingly short of tourists.
Other than us of course.
M’diq’s throbbing
Whilst the skipper mightn’t have been a schoolboy, like all good skippers he was a drinker and as no stranger to M’diq (there’s not a lot of privacy in marina showers!) he knew of an inexpensive and licensed restaurant a short amble along Avenue Lalla Nezha overlooking the seafront (though from the wrong side of this brisk road). The Cocodrilo was doing a brisk trade and provided us beers and generous G&Ts along with great food and great, friendly service.
It was confusing, it was lively, it was random, it was curious, and yet, as is so often the case in the melee of a Muslim city by moonlight, it never felt threatening or uncomfortable.
M’diq’s shrinking
With a longish day’s sail back to the Costa del Sol ahead of us we unwound our entry procedures when the officials arrived at 8am. The box on the marina office desk marked “exit” was empty so we were “invited” to re-use the entry forms to be processed out. We waddled back to the immigration office to have our forms and our passports once more stamped with a flourish, then to customs where the remaining carbon copy of our boat’s form was taken and finally back to the marina office to pay. We were out and once again, while it was a bit of an obstacle course, bringing just a little patience along it was no hassle at all.
We cast off, rounded the breakwater and set course north on another grotty, overcast day with an irritating absence of wind. If the Costa del Sol had largely lived up to its name on this trip, North Africa had not lived up to our preconceptions.
As M’diq shrunk away to nothing after our night of pleasure we all agreed, even the girls, that M’diq had been great fun and definitely worthwhile.
Once again, this is not the story of my life!
