Algeria, City of Collo

Collo harbor, South of Cap Collo, has a “greeting” dock
complete with Coast Guard station.
Apparently, all boats, must be acknowledge by the Coast Guard before
coming in or going out. Leaving the
harbor, they just have to “flagged” an acknowledgement by the Coast Guard and
then they can go on with their business.

Once tied up, we were visited finally by the local Police,
Coast Guard, and the Algerian Navy officials.
We were never completely sure who was in charge as they all had their
set of requests. During some of the
paperwork and questioning, I was asked by the Algerian Naval officer to show my
camera. He wanted to see what pictures I
had on my camera. I turned on my camera
and scrolled through my countless pictures of the Algerian water and
shorelines, plus I think there were also some pictures of dolphins. I think he was satisfied that I did not have
pictures that would damage the Algerian countries integrity. Some of our additional questioning was
focused on our missing Visa’s that were required to go beyond the harbor and
the fact that Molly’s husband was not sailing with us. The authorities did not understand why a married
woman would be on our boat and her husband was not along with her. They asked repeatedly, “where is your
husband”? I think they are still
wondering about that!

Once we were settled, we then negotiated for ice, fuel and
water. The harbor “master” (or the one
who seemed to be in control of the fuel dock and such) arranged for me to get a
big bag of ice and some fresh water. He
then invited Fred and I into his office.
He was quite proud of his pictures of Mohammad Ali and Che Guevara and
the many pictures of Collo in the early 1900’s.
He asked Fred and I to sign his “guest book”, and with pleasure we did
and realized we were the first to sign in the book! Later, Ken and Fred traded one Grateful Red
hat and one GR tee-shirt for 20 liters of diesel.

Our plans were to leave around 11PM to do our overnight to Spain (Palma
Mallorica) and so we contacted the Coast Guard dock to let them know we would
be leaving then. There were other
fishing boats going out at night so the Coast Guard dock was active and well
lit. We said our good byes and headed
out to a night of motoring with the Jib
sail up. Over the night our shifts were
sail one hour, watch one hour and then off 3 hours. By this time I am very tuned to overnight
sails although, I will be happy not to do any more in my life if
possible….well, don’t think that will happen!