Bon aire, mauvais waves

After a moderately breezy night we headed over towards Bonaire this morning with the intention of anchoring for lunch in a cala (bay) en route. The wind was fine, around force 3-4 from the north or north-east, but the sea was full of quite big bumps - 1 to 1.5 metre waves. The crew retired below to lie down, but because of the spray as we crashed through the waves, all the hatches were shut and it was very airless below.

Naturally as the cala we had in mind is the only one sheltered from the north-east around here, and it's Sunday, it was totally full of anchored boats when we arrived. Anchoring further out would have meant being in 15m depth and in the swell, so we gave it a miss and came on to Bonaire. This is where we started and where Kalessin spent a month out of the water in July.

It is very hot here. We're still on the reception pontoon as Tony, the main man in Bonaire, is at lunch. Still at least there is a really good internet connection which was the main point of coming over here rather than setting off to Barcelona from Colonia de san Pedro. Plus we can have another meal at the Cocodrilo restaurant.

Every forecast I can get hold of says the wind will drop during the day and we should get a force three to four on the beam - perfect for our crossing tomorrow. I do hope so. I don't think the crew could cope with 24 hours of today's bumps.

Wind wind wind

After five nights in Porto Cristo we left on Thursday morning to head north again. In deference to Beth, who has never done any yacht sailing before, we departed about 8.30am when the sea was still flat and there was no wind at all. Just as well in fact, as after four hours or so she started to get a bit queasy. We managed some sailing with the wind almost aft, more motoring, and got back to Colonia de San Pedro for the third time, much to Ben’s disgust. (He thinks it’s boring).

The forecast was for gales on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, and sure enough about 12.30 on Friday lunchtime, after a morning of showers and thunder, the wind arrived. Not gales exactly but a fairly steady force 5-6, peaking with a 45-knot gust somewhere around 4am on Saturday. It’s from just south of east so we’re well sheltered here in the lee of the hills – Alcudia across the bay is much more exposed, and the south of Mallorca could be pretty horrible. The rain is full of orange dust from the Sahara which has left messy spots all over the boat.

The winds are modest by northern European standards – we’ve been remembering a day in a marina miles inland in the Dutch delta when we saw steady force 7 and a peak of 50 knots - but this is probably the strongest wind we’ve seen in a while.

It’s hard to tell, given the weather, but judging by Thursday which was hot and calm, there seem to be fewer tourists around than on our previous visit. We thought the peak might be the first two weeks in August and this could well be correct. If so, hooray. I’ve spent most of my life avoiding top holiday destinations at peak time for a jolly good reason – they’re loathsome.

Wet, wet, wet

Well, this is depressing. We collected Guy & Beth from Palma airport last night and they seem to have brought UK weather with them. As we drove into Porto Cristo it started raining. When we got back to the boat about 1am Ben was asleep with all the hatches open & our beds were wet. There was quite strong wind overnight. About 5.30am it started raining again, and at noon it’s still raining hard, with no sign of let-up. I had to put on my Musto waterproof jacket to go to the loo! Oh yes, and the internet connection isn’t working (possibly because everyone else in the marina is trying to access it…)

Sam has headed off to return the hire car, bless him, and fortunately all three youngsters slept until after 11am. On a different morning I might have woken them but today bed seems like a really good place to be.

I didn’t sleep much. There were loud Germans until about 4am, rocking boat, squeaky fenders, gusting wind, Sam snoring etc. Also I’d had to stay awake until 1am at the airport, and my go-to-sleep mechanism seemed to be switched off. Once it started raining hard I dozed off – I guess it brings back happy memories of wet boat holidays in the Norfolk Broads and the Netherlands.

Yesterday we made the most of having the car to do a big supermarket shop in Manacor, the nearest big town (and apparently Mallorca’s second largest). Then we went down to take a look at Porto Colom which was the alternative to coming in here. It’s a lovely setting, a lagoon rather like Fornells, only smaller, but as far as we could see there were no berths or moorings available, and a man on a British boat here in Porto Cristo was saying he had a very uncomfortable night anchored in there on Monday.

This chap is on a yacht which we think is flying the Ocean Cruising Club burgee, they spent last summer in Ibiza and this summer in Mallorca, and he doesn’t seem to have a pilot book for the Balearic Islands – he borrowed ours! Granted they cost an extortionate £35 and are sometimes wrong or out of date, but I wouldn’t want to be without one. We have several hundred pounds’ worth of pilot books for places we’ve been, now residing under the aft cabin bunk.

Talking of the aft cabin, Ben is very cross at being turned out of “his” cabin to make way for Guy and Beth. He has to sleep in the main cabin which means much less privacy. It’s hard to say anything to him except “sorry, it has to be this way”. The boat feels very full with five large people on it.

Porto Cristo

We’re in Porto Cristo, about halfway down the right-hand side of Mallorca. Rather surprisingly it’s grey, dull and drizzling, although still very warm. Ben has occasionally expressed a desire to be sailing back in the North Sea, and Sam suggested we take the canopy down and Ben could put on his waterproofs and go and sit in the rain to remind him of home. He declined.

I had a bad couple of hours when we left Colonia de San Pedro. I think I didn’t really see the point of going anywhere else, and the pilot book is full of dire warnings about how difficult it is to find space in any bays or ports down the east coast. In fact when we arrived about 2 o’clock on Saturday afternoon the visitors’ berths were almost all empty, so there was no problem at all. There are strong winds forecast for tomorrow though, so today it seems to be filling up a bit. I do hope when we next go out sailing I feel better, although we seem to be getting very mixed weather, and further strong winds for several days yet.

We've just been reading the log of Khepri, our friends from last year, who covered 1100 miles on their way back from the Azores, and here I am worrying about 30-mile passages...

This is a very sheltered bay – more of a gorge, in fact, as it’s very steep-sided - and the marina is round a right-angle bend, so although a bit of swell sometimes comes in there’s good protection. The main asset is the Club Nautico, which has a pleasant restaurant and bar, a huge rooftop swimming pool with a view over the town, magnificent showers, free wifi internet access and even a €3 washing machine. The berth isn't cheap, but about half the price of Sunseeker in Mahon!




Pictured: Camilla & Ben in rooftop pool. Porto Cristo is behind and top of
Kalessin's mast just visible to the left

The town is a bit tacky – most people only come here to visit the Caves of Drac, which we did this morning. The caves (pictured right - no flash allowed so these are a bit shaky) are fantastic, with a huge subterranean lake complete with musicians in boats covered in fairly-lights. However, there’s a very slick operation to feed as many tourists through as possible, and as Ben said it feels like much less of an adventure than the cold wet caves of the Yorkshire Dales. Otherwise the town features a pleasant, but small, beach and some touristy shops. Sam and I explored a bit further this morning when we went to find a car hire place 15 minutes’ walk inland, and it’s mostly very ordinary. I suspect that the workers of the huge resorts like Cala Millor, just up the coast, all live here. The rich people live in the nice villas between the gorge and the sea itself.

We’re hiring the car because Guy and his girlfriend Beth are due to join us tomorrow. A one-way taxi would cost them €60, and a day’s car hire costs €40 and means we can meet them when they get in around midnight, so a better deal all round. We might spend a bit of tomorrow afternoon exploring, and also going for a big shop at a cheaper supermarket inland.

I think this is as far south as we’ll go. We hoped to get to the nature reserve on the Islas Cabreras but a combination of Spanish bureaucracy (you have to request a permit by fax, then be in the same place for about three days, not including weekends, so they can fax a permit back to you) and unpromising weather, plus me being a total and utter wimp, decided us that we were better off here. Once Guy arrives we hope there’ll be a weather window for us to go back to northern Mallorca on Thursday, then hole up again when more strong wind comes through, and head for Barcelona in around a week’s time.

More pictures from Menorca

A typical inhabitant of the Sunseeker berth in Mahon, Menorca. Owners don't like mentioning fuel costs, but we heard about one who spent £7000 on diesel during one holidayKalessin anchored outside Mahon, viewed from the fort at La Mola. We were here for three nights. Looks busy, but this was mid-afternoon - there were twice as many overnight!


Boys and their toys - Sam & Ben fire the smaller Vickers from the fort at La Mola

Ciudadela - boats, boats everywhere and not a single visitors' mooring. You can't see the swell coming in but it was already starting at this point

Back to Mallorca – and marina heaven

17 August 2007

I have to admit it – I am a marina tart. I love the idea of a solitary anchorage with a golden beach and beautiful views (though you don’t get solitary here in August). I really do love being able to swim off the back of the boat and the fresher air that you get in mid-bay. But when it comes to lumps and bumps in the sea, or nasty bits of wind, I really, really like being tied up to a nice solid quay. And after a few days of anchorages and moorings I get rather tired of everything on the boat, including me, always being encrusted in salt, and never really dry, with not enough fresh water to wash anything down.

We went and explored Ciudadela (see below), which is pretty but more than somewhat touristy. Getting into town proved a bit of a challenge, as Ben rowed us up to the beach but were told we couldn’t land as the area was reserved for swimmers. So he rowed all the way back and up to the open end of the cala where there was a tiny landing place, just big enough to get the dinghy ashore. After our hot row and walk into town we were desperately thirsty, but the cafĂ© we went into was really only interested in serving food – they took 10 minutes to take our order and another 10 minutes to bring drinks. Quite amazing in Spain at about 6.30pm, where the only people eating are Brits with small children!

Having walked around, seen the sights, and enjoyed a pleasant meal, we got back to the anchorage about 9.30pm to find a westerly swell coming in and Kalessin rolling through an angle of about 60 degrees – modest compared with the boats in the outer anchorage but still enough to ensure an extremely unpleasant and sleepless night. I spent most of it sitting on the cabin sole, the most stable part of the boat, and wishing I was almost anywhere else. I offered God a large donation to any Christian charity of his choice if he would take the swell away, but although it eventually reduced slightly for an hour or so (and I got a bit of sleep) it then came back, so perhaps He wasn’t listening. Or perhaps someone else needed the swell. Just to add insult to injury, for the first time we were invaded by mosquitoes and both Sam & I got bitten. Frankly I don’t mind if I never go to Ciudadela again.

At first light on Wednesday morning we dinghied and swam ashore, cast off the lines and set off out into the grey, lumpy sea. We’d picked up a forecast which wasn’t too good, wind up to force 5 on the nose, but in fact it was only a 3-4 and just far enough aft for us to sail pretty speedily – 6 knots-plus most of the way, in brilliant sunshine once the sun came up. Even better, as we approached Mallorca the sea flattened out more and more, and we had a couple of hours of really good sailing before the wind died away.

So now we’re back in Colonia de Sant Pedro which was our previous jumping-off point from Mallorca. We came here because they seemed to have more room than most of the other marinas and we thought we had a good chance of finding a place, which was correct. At 11am exactly yesterday morning the wind started blowing steadily from the north-east at around a force 5-6 and it hasn’t stopped since, so we suspect this of being a tramontana, the notorious northerly wind cause by a depression in the Golfe du Lion. (The wind indicator says 12-15 knots which is a force 4, but we strongly suspect it of under-reading because (a) on Wednesday we were sailing at 6.8 knots in an indicated 8 knots of wind which is improbable, (b) there is a great big swell and lots of white horses, which seems like more than a force 4, and (c) not a single boat seems to be moving in the whole of Alcudia bay).

Despite the spectacular swell outside the harbour we are in here and it’s safe and pleasant, we are clean and showered and we have washed our clothes (although the spray coming over the harbour wall makes them a bit salty again), we have mains electricity and the fridge running and gallons of fresh water in the tanks, there is a spectacular view of mountains with some nice walks along the coastline, pleasant bars and restaurants, and a Spar supermarket within five minutes’ walk, and altogether it’s pretty close to heaven.

I haven’t put this to Sam yet but wonder if we could just stay here until Guy arrives on the 21st… On the other hand we have applied for a permit to visit the Islas Cabreras nature reserve to the south of Mallorca on Monday so perhaps we ought to make a bit of an effort to get down there.

For the record, the tally so far is:
  • 1 night ashore (before the launch)
  • 9 nights in marinas or quayside
  • 12 nights on moorings or anchored
Some days the sea looks like this (approaching Mallorca as the wind dies):

...and then there are days when you're glad to be in a marina (Tramontana off Colonia de San Pedro):


14 August 2007

We’re anchored in a little cala on the edge of Ciudadela – this one is a long narrow inlet where we have an anchor out at the front and two lines ashore. The shore lines were a slick combination of me swimming ashore and Ben in the dinghy, though casting them off might be fun. Ben got me to look at the anchor with a mask for reassurance – it’s buried so deep you can only just see it. The water is very clear and full of little fishes.

The downside (there’s always one) is the Spanish charter boat anchored next to us with music on full blast. Sam and Ben don’t mind too much as the yacht is well draped with almost completely naked Spanish teenagers. Hopefully later this afternoon we’ll get to see Ciudadela, which we missed last time and is lovely, according to the guidebooks.

We spent three more nights on a mooring in Fornells and apart from the bumpy periods in the early afternoon and early evening when all the boats came and went, it was a lovely spot. We had lots of interesting cloud and then quite a lot of rain one night – it’s disconcerting getting clouds here because Mediterranean weather patterns are so different from home – you never know what they mean.

Back to Fornells

We’re back in Fornells today after three nights at anchor in the Cala Taulera on the edge of Mahon. The wind has gone around to the south-west, not ideal for a sail back to Mallorca, and it’s the weekend, so we’ve taken the easy option and come back here. At the moment it’s quite windy and also quite choppy but usually the wind starts to drop by around 8pm so we’re hoping for a less splashy dinghy ride to the town – it will be the first time we have eaten out since we came here last time, 10 days ago.

Three days at anchor is a record for us and fortunately last night was quite calm so I got a bit of sleep. Sam didn’t though – he said he kept waiting for me to wake up! There was a huge concert up at the fort but fortunately it was really barely audible and the only disturbance was the police arriving at 5am. The anchorage was jam-packed, with boats continuing to arrive after dark.

We spent a bit of time chatting to Tony, who is anchored waiting for friends to arrive. His 49-footer has 11 berths but he says only two of them are usable – the rest are full of “stuff”. He used to have a Moody 33 and says he was much more disciplined in those days. You do wonder about people’s lives – he’s divorced, has various possessions and motorbikes in storage and used to have an apartment in Spain somewhere but doesn’t any more. If you ask him a question he gives you so much detail there’s not time to follow up with questions like “why are you sailing around the Balearics single-handed in a superfast racing 49-footer?”



9 August 2007

We’ve just been to visit the vast fortress on the Ila de la Mola, next to our anchorage. For the second day running it has been grey and cloudy, but unlike yesterday when it was very windy, today is close and still with spots of rain. Unfortunately we haven’t picked up a forecast for this area on the Navtex, although I am getting dire warnings for the area north of Corsica where there is a deep depression and Force 8s. I think we’ll stay here tonight but it would be good to know what to expect tomorrow. Personally I’d like to rush back to Mallorca and tie up in a nice, solid, safe, expensive marina. I can’t believe I can be such a wimp.

The fortress is extraordinary – built in the mid 19th century at a time when artillery was developing rapidly, it was out of date as soon as it was completed and has never seen serious action. It also houses some enormous Vickers cannons from 1931 which could probably be put out of action by any WW2 bomber, as they could hit a ship 35km away but couldn’t be pointed up at the sky. Hard to tell if the fort was an enormous waste of money or an effective deterrent – a bit like most other military activities then.

The visit was a good way to spend a few hours and reminded us that last year we made a big effort to do educational things, especially for Ben’s benefit, and we need to do more of the same this year. It does make the whole trip seem much more worthwhile. We’ve been lucky in that this has probably been our coolest day so far – only 25 deg. We couldn’t have contemplated it in 32 deg and blazing sunshine.



8 August 2007

Following our two expensive nights in the middle of Mahon we’ve now moved back to the anchorage near the entrance to the harbour. It’s forecast to be quite windy until tomorrow morning and we’re lying to two anchors. In spite of the fact that we’ve hardly moved since we set them I twitch every time there is a gust or a creaking noise and am unable to relax at all. I think I need treatment. Mind you, it did take us three goes to set the first anchor.

Unsurprisingly given the forecast it’s very busy in here. Sam has just counted 30 yachts, and nationalities we have spotted so far include Spanish, French, Italian, British, German, Danish, Swedish, Belgian, Austrian, New Zealand and South African. Quite a few of the boats were here when we came in a few days ago – not sure of the appeal as it’s at least two miles to the town by dinghy, but there you go.

In spite of the cost of the Sunseeker berth it probably was worth it. (I notice the price halves in June and September and goes down to about a fifth the rest of the year). If we’d been stuck in this anchorage we probably wouldn’t have seen Mahon at all. Every evening we were there we saw desperate boats cruising up and down looking for a space, and the port authorities really weren’t interested. We got to hobnob with the millionaires in a top spot. Sam got chatting to the British family next to us, who have a permanent mooring there, and reckoned their relatively modest 45ft motorboat was worth about £800,000. He was too embarrassed to tell us how much it costs him to fill up with fuel.

The biggest sailing and motor yachts have to anchor off or go to the cruise-liner berth, but there are loads of massively ostentatious boats along the harbour front. Many have uniformed staff, and I don’t think they have to trot up to Spar for their groceries. It must be a strange life.

Pictures, Mallorca & Menorca

Launch in Bonaire

Mooring in Fornells, Menorca

Porto Addaya, Menorca

Quayside, Mahon

Meat pies in Mahon



Why we love Sunseeker, and other tales

We’ve spent last night in the most expensive berth in the world, probably – the Sunseeker pontoon in Mahon, capital of Menorca. It’s costing us €79 a night which is four times as much as we were paying in Galicia this time last year, for traffic noise, dirt, passing ships and minimal facilities. And the good thing is, we’re really pleased to be here.

Mahon was due to be our next step after Port Addaya and after our various technical issues the good news was that it has the best yacht spares in Menorca. So we set off on our first hazy morning heading into a light south-easterly. The entrance to Mahon, which is one of the great ports of the Med, is spectacular and full of fortifications built by the British when they ran the place in the late eighteenth century. We were hopeful of finding a berth and arrived at the visitors’ pontoon about 2pm to be told by an unhelpful marinero that there was no space in the entire port – all “complete”, despite many visible spaces.

We headed back down to the rather bleak visitors’ anchorage, about 1.5 miles out of town, while Sam tried various options by phone and VHF, including the port authorities, Sunseeker who maintain a base here, and the Marina Menorca who didn’t answer their phone, without success. We anchored – naturally it took three goes to get it right – and wandered what to do next. After a while, the phone rang. It was the man from Sunseeker (he’s called Ash – buy a boat from him if you happen to be passing), whom Sam had called earlier, saying that a berth had opened up if we wanted it. Imagine – he took the trouble to find our number and call us back when he could just have given a berth to the next caller. So here were are.

Mahon is a really nice, amazingly Spanish town. We managed to find a pump servicing kit for the Lavac from Pedro’s Boat supplies, bought some local gin from the distiller where you just help yourself to samples, and went to the big Spar supermarket underneath the church cloisters which have become Mahon’s market. It is however stonkingly hot, and we were forced to stop several times for cool drinks. When we got back to the yacht we were exceedingly hot and dusty, and the Sunseeker showers don’t open until tomorrow. Also, were are a tourist attraction – the trouble with being right on the promenade at the front of the town. Maybe tomorrow we’ll save our €79 and go to an anchorage.


5 August 2007


We spent a couple of nights in Porto Addaya, only about 10 miles east of Fornells – one in the marina, which we thought was expensive at the time, and one anchored in the cala. It’s a very pretty and very sheltered bay, and the marina people are very helpful, but the town itself consists almost entirely of new, albeit tasteful, residential development around two long inlets, which is a bit depressing – just one bar, and one small commercial centre with supermarket and restaurant, all very English. (No local butter in the supermarket - only Kerrygold and Country Life, although Menorca is a big dairy producer). The cala (bay) is a better place to be, apart from my usual nervousness about anchoring.

The day getting from Fornells to Addaya was a bad one. When we set off, we thought all systems on the boat were working OK. We filled up with water at the port in Fornells. Shortly afterwards we discovered the bilges were full of fresh water, then we discovered that the manual bilge pump wasn’t working (although the electric one was fine) and that the pressurised water system wasn’t working at all (fortunately we have a fallback system with a footpump from the front tank, but it is nice to be able to turn on a tap to get water). The diesel gauge was registering a quarter full instead of almost full. And finally we discovered that our dear friend the Lavac (loo) wasn’t emptying properly.

Eventually we discovered that a tiny pipe under the sink had come adrift and had probably pumped quite a lot of the Fornells water straight into the bilge. The Lavac problem seems to relate to various seals which have given up the ghost. And the diesel gauge was disconnected at the back. The bilge pump seems to have died, though.


3 August 2007

Today has been a very nothing day so far. We’re still in Fornells and sitting out a forecast northerly force 5-6 – here at the bottom end of the inlet we’ve seen a maximum of around 21 knots which is at the top of a force 5. Going ashore in the dinghy would mean getting very wet, so we’ve just been on board doing the things you always do on a boat in bad weather. The really odd thing is doing them when it’s 28 degrees C – playing Scrabble etc should really be done when it’s cold or raining.

Yesterday we went over to the little settlement closest to where we are, where there’s a sailing school (or possibly two) and a posh restaurant. We had a pleasant lunch in a little hostal which seems to be entirely occupied by dinghy-sailing English people. No showers at the sailing club but that was probably just as well, since we got soaked again on the way back to the yacht.

In the evening we had planned a beach barbecue but with the wind already starting to get up that didn’t look like a very good idea. So for the first time we used our new Cobb barbecue on board. On the whole it was pretty successful, although Spanish barbecue meat leaves something to be desired. We also discovered that if you put on the lid straight after lighting the barbecue the whole thing goes out instantly and you have to start again. We celebrated our successful meal by having a rather chilly solar shower in the gathering darkness and increasing wind – the coldest I’ve been since we arrived! At least my hair is a bit less salty.

This is the longest time since we left England that we have been off shore power and haven’t had the engine running either. The solar panels do what they can but we have had to turn off the fridge which was draining its battery comprehensively (it has a dedicated battery). We ran the engine for an hour this morning but even that wasn’t really enough to chill the fridge down. However now that we’ve eaten the meat other things in the fridge will probably survive fine at higher temperatures… warm beer isn’t so good, though.

Planning is proving challenging. We have to collect Guy and Beth from Palma Airport on the 21st so it makes sense to be somewhere within easy reach, but the marinas closest to the airport look pretty grim, or likely to be full, or both. Also the western side of Mallorca only has one port, Soller, while the eastern side is full of sheltered inlets. So we might not do a lap of Mallorca but instead stick to the eastern side, just heading south to collect the youngsters, retracing our steps, and then perhaps leaving from Bonaire to go to Barcelona. We’ll see.


1 August 07

Yesterday we sailed from Mallorca to Menorca. We aimed to go to Ciudadella, a very attractive small town which seems to have abandoned interest in visiting yachtsmen as its visitors’ quay was closed. We anchored in an extremely pretty little south-facing W-shaped bay on the edge of town, which was so small and full that we had to take a line ashore. I swam to the rocks, climbed up them with the rope in my teeth and tied it to a tree. Unfortunately during the evening the wind came around to the south and the bay was filled with the sound of sloshing waves all night. The anchor held fine but as ever at anchor I got very jittery and didn’t get to sleep until around 1.30am when the wind dropped a bit.

This morning, with continuing southerly winds forecast (fortunately we picked up a rather broken French forecast on the Navtex – I find the radio forecasts in Spanish a bit hard to follow), we abandoned plans to sail around the south of the island and instead headed around the north – Menorca is only 26 miles long. Good choice as we had an excellent sail most of the way in a relatively calm sea. We rounded Menorca’s most northerly cape and hit an unpleasant patch of south-easterly gusting up to about 18 knots – on the nose at that point - and bumpy, confused seas.

Fornells, where we are now, has a lovely inland sea stretching back from a narrow entrance. It was still quite windy when we arrived but we headed right down to the south of the inlet where it’s more sheltered. The pilot book says the weakness of Fornells is that the bottom is so churned up by anchoring that the holding is not very good. Fortunately there are dozens of what seem to be visitors’ moorings and we’re on one now. It’s not spectacularly beautiful (unlike Mallorca) but very pleasant and peaceful. There are loads of sailing schools so if watching people capsize turns you on there’s always plenty to see!

This evening we took the dinghy up to the supermarket in the village for stores – just under a mile. Getting there was fine, but on the way back we were heavily laden with bags and heading into the wind and we got amazingly wet. What a good thing that the water is nearly 30 deg C. The groceries survived pretty well too, although we were forced to eat the fresh bread straight away.

Merry Christmas from just me

Video of photos made for Sam's funeral    Dear friends and family As I hope you all know, this year has been a difficult one for me. On ...