Rolling east to Essaouira. Did we ever roll! With 5m waves on the beam we rolled for 5 days. Nothing stayed in place. Of course all the obvious things go flying (like dishes don’t stay on tables) but the tables and benches in the mess broke free of their lashings and started moving around. Rather dangerous, thankfully nobody got crushed by a bench full of textbooks or hit by the hot kettle flying off it’s shelf. There’s very few lash points and fiddles on the Gulden Leeuw so at best things can’t be secured very well. The mizzen sail ripped, but there was a new one on board ready to replace it and the main gaff jaws broke as well.

I was excited to get to Essaouira and anchor so the rolling would stop. The students had been very seasick and also some GI bug was going around knocking them out as well. The maritime crew was having a hard time getting work done with all the rolling as well. But when we got to Essaouira the swell continued to roll into the harbour and we kept rolling!!!

I took this video while we were anchored.

I got a slight break from the rolling because I brought a couple students to the hospital in Essaouira. We had a pretty sporty zodiac ride through the swell to shore and I was completely soaked on arrival, like underwear soaked kinda soaked. We walked into town and found the hospital. I had seen some bad reviews online but since we’d been at sea with these medical issues for the last 5 days I thought that we should at least go and check it out. We had to enter from the back of the hospital, the paved road turned into dirt and then I could see a line up of people inside. We walked towards the open doorway. There were no signs in any language visible to give us directions. Once inside we were waiting looking around trying to figure out how to see the doctor. Other than the 5 people waiting for the man at the desk behind a glass window it was very quiet inside and dark. There were some cats roaming around and water pooled on the floor of the deserted hallways we could see. A man came up to us and spoke in French asking what we needed. One of the students is fluent in French so they were able to converse much more easily than I could. We asked to see a doctor and he directed us down a hallway to the left. Arriving in the room at the end of the hall we were amongst a group of people sitting on chairs in a line waiting to get into a small room where presumably the doctor was. There were children with crazy looking skin peeling off their faces in the line and more cats roaming around. I talked to the students and we decided that we were probably better off to use the medication and first aid equipment available to us on the boat instead of getting in the line. We left the hospital feeling pretty lucky to have other options.

After we left the hospital I contacted the first mate to let him know that we were able to head back in the zodiac. Lucky for us he was busy doing errands and suggested that we walk around in the medina until he was done. We spent the next couple hours wandering around through the markets of the medina and I actually talked to a shopkeeper whose friend was studying electrical engineering in Thunder Bay!!!! Small world!

We were able to buy a snack of crepes with Nutella and all in all had a pretty nice afternoon.

Getting back to the Gulden Leeuw was another sporty ride in the waves and when we got out to the ship they were heaving up the anchor because the ship had started dragging due to the waves. It was challenging getting back on board but thanks to the skilled sailors in the zodiac and on board we made it. We steamed out of the harbour and motored around all night waiting for dawn to assess if we’d be able to anchor in the harbour safely or if we’d have to steam to Agadir which would change our port program plans. Thankfully we were able to anchor in Essaouira the next day and zodiac everyone ashore to begin our Morocco adventure!