Mallorca

Our sail from Ibiza to Mallorca was boisterous! Hard on the wind (quite a lot of it!) and lumpy. We sailed in company with Innamorata (who left us behind) and Rockhopper of London (who we left behind!). It was a long day, but we managed it, arriving at Santa Ponce, a well protected, but not very inspiring bay on the west coast.

It was May 3^rd. Clive and Aileen would be meeting us around June 10^th in Palma and looking after Toodle-oo! for 10 days while we fly off to Cancun for Stephanie and Chris’ destination wedding – so we had a little more than a month to explore. Better take a walk!

We found a very nice little anchorage at Ses Illetes, fairly close to Palma and on the bus route and we stayed there for a week – and later in the month came back there again. It’s a small anchorage that gets crowded every day with day-trippers seeking out the sun and swimming, anchoring far too close – but not creating any danger – everyone always quite respectful.

The bus was made use of – to provision and to have a look around Palma – what a nice city! Fantastic cathedral – very tall with super stained glass.

A car rental allowed us to tour the island and we drove into the mountains over passes clogged with cyclists to the lovely town of Soller. We got rather lost in Soller’s winding narrow streets and didn’t realize that we were missing a festival at Port Soller just 15 minutes further north. When we finally arrived there, the festival had just finished and all we saw was the aftermath with folks dressed in period costumes from when the Spanish were battling the Moors… everyone painted up in soot from the fierce battles! At least we could still get a drink!

With the dramatic north coast offering much more appeal, we sailed around the western tip of Mallorca towards Soller, stopping in the magical bay of Cala Deya and enjoyed a walk up to the village the following morning. Soller itself was a challenge in that the holding is rubbish – taking us 4 attempts to get hooked. However, having a laundry, we made good use of the town.

Menorca

We had a light wind sail/motor over to Menorca, arriving at one of our favorite anchorages at Algaiarens which sported a couple of lovely relaxing beaches and a nice walk to cala Morell – a very very small anchorage with a small village surrounding it – along with prehistoric cave dwellings.

We carried on along the north coast of Menorca as far as Addaia where we waited out some heavy weather with Innamorata, taking advantage of the bus service to take us into the capital, Mahon for some provisioning.

We took a super walk – which turned rather sour… We were following a Komoot App route and were 3/4 done when we met a fellow who asked us where we’d come from. He got all shirty, told us we were on private property and forced us to return the way we’d come! As we backtracked we checked that there wasn’t a single sign indicating private property… Great walk though!

We back-tracked along the northern coast of Menorca and then the northern coast of Mallorca again – noticing that the tourist season appeared to be getting underway with more and more boats crowding into the anchorages. Even so, we didn’t have any of the issues we’d heard about from friends relating horror stories of incompetent sailors anchoring dangerously close to other boats.

We arrived back in Ses Illetes where Clive joined us and managed a light wind sail the following day to a close-by anchorage so that Clive could learn some of the intricacies of Toodle-oo! and the following day made our way into Palma for our first Med-Mooring with ‘Slime Lines’ experience. We lived to tell the tale!

10 days off the boat passed very quickly as we had a great time in Cancun at Stephanie’s wedding.

On our return, sadly we hardly spent any time at all with Clive and Aileen – just one night – then they were off back to California. Unfortunately, they’d really not had a chance to sail Toodle-oo! as the winds had disappeared, but I think they had a decent time exploring Palma.

We left Palma and once again, headed around to the north coast of Mallorca experiencing some of the weirdest winds as we came around the western point – with winds gusting 25 knots from the south followed by 25 north seconds later! The boat was all over the place and in the end we opted to simply drop the sails and motor, finding an isolated anchorage just west of Soller.

We continued in to Soller the following day and once again experienced anchoring difficulties – this time getting the chain caught. . Fortunately, Jamie from Grateful assisted us by diving on the anchor to diagnose  what was going on – the chain had managed to fall between two rocks and was trapped. He then directed us so that we could align the boat in such a way that the chain could clear the rocks and we were free. Jamie and Nicki came aboard that evening for some well deserved refreshments!

With no wind in the forecast we decided to take advantage and visit some very remote spots on the north coast that are close to Soller – Cala Calobra is the most dramatic with high cliffs all around and promising an interesting hike up a gorge. Turned out that due to recent(?) rain, the hike was not tenable – so we got as far as we could (not very) and turned tail.

Our last sail in Mallorca took us to the north eastern tip of the island – as close as we could get to Menorca, Cala Figuera. There’s nothing here and it’s rocky so getting the anchor set was once again problematic.

We sailed to the south coast of Menorca stopping overnight at a nice sandy anchorage before moving onto Mahon, which turned out to be impossible to anchor at – way too crowded and goopy mud such that getting a decent grip was impossible, so we moved on to  Cala Vellana – a gem of a place that we enjoyed for our last few days in Spain.