Stranded at Sea: French Financier and Daughters Caught in Morocco’s Border Closure

"We ran out of fuel on July 8 and we sent out an SOS. It was the Spaniards who helped us, because there is a Spanish enclave in Morocco called Ceuta. A frigate towed us but because of covid-19 we couldn’t dock. We reached a relief dock where we were resupplied without anyone getting off. They gave us a certificate saying we had stayed on the boat," the Franco-Swiss financier told the newspaper Le Progrès.

This man and his daughters had set sail from Tetouan to reach the marina of Rabat on the Atlantic coast. However, he was far from imagining the nightmare he was about to live. "But on July 9, arrived off Rabat, Morocco forbade us to disembark because we were coming from Spain. A navy frigate even came to meet us. A warship that asked us to turn back! But where to go? We have no more fuel..." he continues.

Things are getting complicated for Rodolphe Pedro. He and his two daughters find themselves stranded on the yacht. "We are in no man’s land and it is a deaf dialogue with the Moroccan authorities, he fumes with anger. He claims to have sought the help of the French embassy.

"We took to the sea from Morocco and we can no longer dock, all because of a border closure issue between Spain and Morocco and certainly tensions between these two countries. They won’t even test us for covid which would solve everything," he laments.