Shipwrecks and Hospitals in Morocco. What's next?

You tell me. I certainly hope nothing that's as scary as that shipwreck though!

“Hospitals?! Shipwreck???!!! Dude... what?! What shipwreck?!”

Let me explain from the comfy chair at my parents' place that I'm sitting in right now.

Last time I wrote I was ecstatic about having found a ship to sail to the Canary islands with. With that ship, the Alumeuse (see picture), we left Saturday the 29th of October because the winds were expected to be favorable that afternoon and we could get a lift from the currents at high tide out of the Straight of Gibraltar. That's when all the water flows out of the Mediterranean, into the Atlantic.

All was well until the next morning, when winds had indeed turned our way, but had also diminished until they were barely there. That meant we were constantly using the engine, and none of us (Jean Paul, 56, captain; Carole, 27, chef de cuisine; myself) liked that very much. Also, a depression with winds up to 30 knots was expected for Wednesday, so all in all we thought it would be a good idea to find a harbor on the Moroccan coast, 40 nautical miles away, to wait out that storm and pray for fair winds to come our way again.

After having seen the first harbor and having deemed it slightly too dangerous to try and enter that due to big waves in the surf, we decided to shoot for a harbor further south. On the morning of Monday the 31st we got there. I had taken the night watch from 3am to 6am and had been sleeping until 8am when Carole woke me up to say we were almost there. Seeing my surprised face when she closed the hatch to the cabin (normally always open on the boat), she responded that we might get some water on deck.

I thought it strange, but I had my morning call of nature, so I had to attend to that first before I could go on deck to check things out for myself. Coming out of the bathroom in my boxers, reaching for my pants, I couldn't get to them. They were moving. I was moving. Everything was moving in a way that my brain could not quite grasp because it was distracted by a horrible, deafening sound above me that I would later find out was the mast breaking. I didn't know it yet, but we were in fact completely dismasted.

As it turned out, entering the surf to get to the harbor located up the river, we were overtaken by a freak wave – 6 meters according to Jean Paul, 8-9 meters according to official reports we heard later in the hospital) – which almost capsized us. Somehow, maybe because of water or air getting into it, the engine was disabled at the same time. This left us in quite a bad position, as the water coming down from the river pushed us back into the waves of the surf continuously, preventing us from getting out of there on our own. On top of that, “us” and “our” at this point involved only me and the captain, because that same freak wave had smashed Carole into the water, and we didn't know whether she was alive or dead.

It got very difficult for us from then on. The big waves played with the 12 meter boat as if it was nothing, and we were inside getting thrown from one side to the other without warning as we had no way to know when or from where the next wave was coming. Add to this knives and wooden doors of cupboards and a table that were also flying around and you have a scene fit for any horror movie. Except this was real. At some point the boat even rolled 360 degrees, and I think it was at this time that I collected most of the bruises on my body.

Why not get out of that boat then? Well, that's what I was considering until I saw what the situation was outside: huge waves rolling in much higher than the boat, and a long line of big rocks on either side of us that were put there to guide ships into the harbor under better conditions. Chances of survival were slim to none for anyone swimming. Looking at the situation inside the boat, and comparing it to the situation outside the boat, I realized that the chances of me dying in the next hour or so were awfully big.

In the two and a half hours which it took for us to finally make it off the boat onto the rescue boat that had been trying to help us since about an hour into the ordeal, we did everything we could to increase our chances of survival a bit. We threw all hard materials into a separate part of the cabin and surrounded ourselves with all the pillows and soft things we could find; we noticed we could hear the waves come in, giving us about two seconds to get into a good position (to prevent being thrown around the cabin again); and I noticed that I could see the sun through the top window, giving me an indication from where the waves would come because I knew the orientation of the coastline and the sun was still more or less in the east.

In the end, we were all rescued, and even Carole had in some miraculous manner managed to swim out to the open ocean and survive until she was found five hours after she had first fallen into the waves. I can't describe how lucky we were very well, but we were told that two years earlier in a comparable situation only a single person had survived out of a crew of eight people.

I'll have you know that I'm just really happy to be alive.

That being said, I lost everything in the shipwreck, except for some clothes that were found in the wreck after it washed up on the shore – I had nothing but my underpants, life vest, and shoes on throughout the entire thing. So thankfully we were all taken care of very well in the hospital of Kinitra, near Mehdia where the harbor was, and the Dutch embassy helped me out astonishingly quickly to get an emergency passport.

This also explains why I can now type this all up in the comfy chair at my parents place near Maastricht where I am now. I had to come back to get new... well, new everything! From backpack to bank cards, from phone to socks, I lost virtually all that I had with me. So I'm very busy these days, apart from seeing family – who were all very happy to see me, just as much as I was glad to see them – to get all of these things so I can continue my journey. I don't know exactly how, when, or where I will start this time, but I want to get to Patagonia, and I want to remember this experience as something that taught me new things, not as something that stopped me from living my life.

So next time I write here, I hope to be on my way again, slightly less bruised (I think about half of my skin over my entire body has turned a color it shouldn't normally be), and with renewed spirits to discover the world.

Ciao!!