One Day off, then our Next Guests Arrive

After the Taylors left, Marina decided she wanted to be closer to the action so we asked to be moved beside the clubhouse. It was far from the supermarket and the showers, but right at the clubhouse and steps to the pool. We had done a quick whirlwind clean upon arrival in Palma, kicking everyone off the boat and sending them to the pool.

Marina and I likened it to having a big party and the house was in post-party condition. We felt a need to clean Tara up and spent an hour or two making it a yacht again. Anyway, we continued the next day fixing and tweaking things and getting ready for the next crew.

David, Elizabeth, Jessica and Emma are friends from Parker Island that live in Vancouver and had come to England the previous week. The arrived in Palma and came down to the boat around 9:30pm. We had a quick dinner out, thank you David, and then hit the hay. In the afternoon we checked weather and decided to stay another day in Palma because it was blowing 25-30 knots (plus I had a long and important conference call to do and needed to have reliable Internet service). So we spent the day touring Palma and trying to find a grocery store ... Surprisingly difficult to do near the marina which is somewhat surprising because there must be 3,000 to 4,000 boats in the basin of Palma. 

The hilight of our day was cycling about 10 kms to try to get a permit for Cabrera, a national park that's a nature reserve located in a series of small islands 10 miles off the South East tip of Mallorca. We cycled around Palma, taking a wrong turn and ending up back within a few hundred meters of the boat. Once we got on track we had to ride quite a long ways, stopping at a Ministry of Education building and asking for directions, then passing a prison, and finally finding the right place. We got there only to find out that they had just implemented a new web-based booking system so we had to do it online. Marina asked the very friendly guy to help us but they were all booked up .... my guess is they'll change that system in a little bit .... on-line booking for no cost and no downside if you don't show up.... there will be people that book every day of the year just to make sure they can have a place in case they decide to go. Oh well, live and learn.

What we did get for all our efforts is a navigation permit so we could at least visit the islands. We took off out of our lumpy anchorage and headed to Cabrera, it was a fast reach and we made excellent time. Jessie and I stayed on the boat while the rest of the crew made a bee-line for the castle on the point in the dinghy. We were poaching a mooring ball so every time a boat came into the harbour, Jess and I got ready to push off the mooring and leave -- kind of stressful.

We decided not to risk having someone come in at dark and kick us off the mooring... you cannot anchor there at all, so we headed back to Mallorca and the marina called Cala D'Or. The previous night at S'Estanyol the rollers came in during the night when the wind died and the boat was side-to-the-waves the entire night. It made me think maybe a Catamaran would be a good choice. So far Mallorca has been OK but the poor anchorages in terms of protection from the prevailing sea state make them sub-optimal. The marinas are nice, and while Marina and I like them, Ross hates staying in marinas and the Toones prefer to anchor as well ,,,, plus each night in a Marina is about $150. 

When we compare the cruising options to Greece and Croatia, it is much different. In both Greece and Croatia, you could always find a place that was out of the prevailing wind and wave combinations; the harbours were more protected and generally we didn't need to spend as many nights in marinas as we have had to in Spain and Italy. France is somewhere in the middle, with some good anchorages, but the bloody Gulf of Lyon blows like stink 6 days out of 10. It's a treacherous stretch of water that you need to be mindful of as it often blows 40+ knots across the entrance.

Anyway, after Cala D'or and the good sleep that we got while we were there, we continued to a pretty little Cala and tried to anchor and tie up to the side of the wall. Unfortunately a French boat took the middle of the anchorage, let out a mile of chain and then didn't tie off to the wall .... so basically, we were always getting in their way, and pulling up, letting out, nothing we could do could change it. So we moved, and then moved again, and again, and finally we gave up and went to another anchorage called Porto Cristo. It's a nice little town with a marina and a small anchorage inside the inlet. We anchored out a little further from the breakwater than Marina wanted (up until dark big RIBs would come charging buy at 30 knots) but I was happy. We both prairie-dogged during the night  a couple of times because we were pretty close to a sheer rock wall, but each time that I checked the GPS anchor watch, we we hadn't moved 5 meters all night long.
Porto Cristo is a nice touristy town and we all piled in the dinghy and went ashore that evening for a gelato (apparently Emma had some type of Burger King meal instead) and just enjoyed walking around the town, visited a church and soaked up the ambiance.

Being a tourist town, Porto Cristo has tour operators that start taking people to the local beaches around 8:00am, so we picked up the anchor and headed out early to find a nice beach and anchorage ourselves. Marina had chosen Cala Molto, a pair of anchorages around a point in land, both with beaches. We chose the smaller of the two and snugged up close to the beach out of most of the wind and prevailing waves. What a lovely spot, though we should have read the book more closely as it is a nudist beach, but apparently for people over 60 years of age.

We swam all day, went ashore, walked the beach -- where I broke a cardinal rule .. I had no cash on me, so when we came across the beach bars, all I could do is dream of the icy-cold beers in the coolers. Throughout the day, more boats came and left until after 8:00pm when there were just a handful of us left anchored out. It was a perfect anchorage for the conditions so we had a great sleep and a great time. We even found enough time to do some boat maintenance ... go figure!