Rabat Marina - Watch the Swell

Created by sue. Last modified on 2009-11-24 19:11:05
Countries: Morocco

We stayed in Rabat (Sale) for 5 days in early November 2009.

The marina facilities are great, it's very safe (apparently the king keeps a small fleet of boats there). This marina would make a great place to keep your boat if you wanted to visit inland Morocco.

The service was great, a RIB met us offshore and guided us in through the narrow and relatively shallow entrance. Prices were very reasonable (offpeak).

Customs and police were thorough, but friendly and very professional.

One word of warning - it can easily get dangerous entering or leaving the port. Based on our observations, we wouldn't recommend entering Rabat if more than 2 M/6 feet of swell is forecast and especially if you don't have a high tide.

Apparently one week before we got there a yacht capsized on the way in, throwing all occupants overboard. One person swam back to the boat & managed to start the engines and successfully navigate the yacht down the narrow passage. I'm sure others will have more details on this.

We left on a day where 8-9 foot swells were forecast. We timed it such as to leave on the high tide. a 60-70 foot boat left minutes before us and hit a big wave on the way out which apparently engulfed it's decks - They made it out in one piece.

The guy driving the RIB came back and recommended that we shouldn't leave - he offered to take us and have a look at the mouth of the channel, which we accepted - we watched the swell for a while and decided that we had approx 10 minutes between large sets that were closing out the entrance with whitewater. We also knew that it was nor or get stuck in Rabat for at least 5 more days based on the weather forecasts.

We decided to go - we approached the exit on our 47 foot yacht and watched the waves until a big set had rolled through. As soon as the last big wave rolled past us and the horizon was clear, we charged full steam ahead straight after it had reached the channel... We had about 200 metres to go when we noticed a large shadow looming towards us on the horizon... we held our breath and charged ahead - we made it out with about 15 seconds to spare - huge waves that broke right across the entrance (bigger than we had previously witnessed) rolled underneath us just as we hit the deep water zone...

We breathed a sigh of relief and agreed we wouldn't of gone out had we seen a set that big on our previous inspection.

All swell forecasts were based on the following website.

Gavin Gorazdowski