Welcome to the Balearics

14.7.17 Friday 

It has only been a week since we returned from our few days back in the U.K. and much has happened since. It is 36ºC in the shade in Mallorca and we are still trying to enjoy this kind of heat. If you keep ‘cool’ without too much exertion and no stress, then you don’t sweat like in the sauna.

precious shade

We left Cartagena and the bleak, bare and dusty southern coast of mainland Spain with very little wind from the south-east on the 9th of July. The most direct crossing to the Balearics is towards the southernmost tiny island of Formentera  (115NM), just a stone throw away from Ibiza.

Now that we have done many nights underway, we fell quite easily back into our trusted routine of watches, moving around the cockpit in search of some precious shade under the sun-awning (bimini),  remembering to drink enough water, eating an additional meal in the middle of the night (proved essential to keep us going). The nights are getting warmer (although very damp).

ships passing

Apart from a spectacular full moon that kept most stars invisible, the absolute highlight in the morning was spotting about three whales. Stephan heard them blowing. He even felt some mist on his back. When he turned around he saw three of them blowing water. He called me but when I came out I still saw the long black back of one about 50m away, maybe as long as Easy Rider (a Minke Whale?). 

The other striking feature was that now that we had left the Alborán sea which is so close to the Moroccan coast, the PanPan safety messages on the VHF had stopped. We wondered whether it was because we were now opposite the Algerian coast and that the distances were getting bigger (more than 130NM). A surprising night nuisance on the VHF were people swearing, imitating animals and exchanging obscenities.

Cala Saona, Formentera

sandy bottom

We arrived at Cala Sahona (38º 41’.8N 01º 23’.3E - yes, we have crossed from west to east again) late morning. From a distance we could see many boats anchored in the open bay. We could see the turquoise water of the cove reflected on the white hulls before we entered the bay! Even if there was almost no more room for another boat to anchor, it was wonderful to arrive. We hoped that most of the motorboats would have left by late afternoon, and they did. By sunset only a few sailing boats remained and we moved closer to the beach.

Next day (11.7.17) we left towards another anchorage on the northeastern part of Ibiza, Cala Boix (39º 01’.7N 01º 36’.5E). The reason why we decided to press on and not to linger around Ibiza for longer is that looking at the long term weather forecast we saw that northerly winds and swell were going to dominate the week ahead, weak northeasterly flow at first becoming much stronger in a few days. 

After the first anchorage, we were quite excited at the prospect of finding another such superb place to anchor… Cala Boix is another open bay which was in theory protected from the east north-east. However somehow the wind and swell found their way around the headland into the anchorage from the south. We soon realised, after a few ‘arguments’, that it was time to leave.

The only alternative was to head some 5NM south to Santa Eulalia, a small attractive town with an extremely expensive but friendly marina (the only secure harbour on the eastern coast apart from Puerto Ibiza).

Cala Llonga

British "Armada"

We crossed from Ibiza to Mallorca on the 12th July. We still had a weak  southeasterly wind flow and we hoped that we would get across before the northeasterly would set in. It was another pleasant night at sea (88NM) until around 4:00 am when we reached the Island of Cabrera (south of Mallorca). Then suddenly the wind backed to the northeast and strengthened (not drastically (F4), but enough to stop Easy Rider in its track). The last 15NM took us 4 hours of tacking against wind and waves where the pitching slowed us down to under 3 knots. We arrived exhausted in Cala Llonga (Marina Cala d’Or) (39º 22’.2N 03º 14’.2E) where we had the misadventure of catching a lazy line in our propeller! Few hours later, after having had a diver deal with the line, we could finally rest. We asked the diver how often is he being called out per day - and the answer was ‘four to five times’. this answer enabled us to sleep much better…90% of the harbour is taken up by large motor yachts of which 80% are British.

Sunset at Cala Saona, Ibiza in the background