We departed Cartagena for Formentera late morning, planning for a midday arrival. The passage was a mixed bag of light wind, motoring and downwind sailing with Spinnaker or wing on wing with Genoa or Code Zero. We arrived at 14:15 after 141NM for an average speed of just 5.3kts.

We anchored right off the beach in beautiful clear blue water, next to Steve and Carol on Innamorata II so we’ve got playmates!

It was nice taking the dinghy to the beach the following day – it’s so much easier with the small dinghy and ‘lightweight’ engine compared to the old rib. Steve and Carol joined us for a walk around the big lagoon filled with salt ponds where Formentera produces their highly sought after pink salt.

Sadly the wind was changing direction to the north such that a change in venue was called for. Additionally, some heavy weather was also due, so we decided to head over to the south side of Ibiza – to an anchorage adjacent to Ibiza City – Cala Talamanca. Meanwhile, Innamorata decided to go straight into Marina de Botafoc which was offering very favorable €22 slip rates. We should have done the same because Talamanca was very rolly – so the following morning we headed in and dealt with Slime Line Med Mooring for our first time. Messy but not too difficult.

The town is interesting in that the old town is perched up a cliff – quite the citadel. Unfortunately, it’s expensive – tappas lunch with a bottle of red – €75. That evening, 3 gins and 2 sangrias another €75! I guess we’re in the playground for the rich and famous!

We departed Ibiza in style – screwing up the getaway and then executing a 450 degree turn in a really narrow fairway populated with million dollar boats! Fortunately, the only damage was sweaty armpits and fluttering hearts!

We headed back to Formentera on a sunny but brisk day (temperatures here are really struggling!) and picked a very quiet and picturesque eastern anchorage – from which we took a very interesting bike ride to the lighthouse at the end of the island.

We returned to Ibiza and headed clockwise around it stopping initially on the south coast at an anchorage where unfortunately there was lots of heavy construction going on, then we moved on to Sant Antoni – a large but spectacularly ugly town! Ibiza was turning out to be a bit of a disappointment… We finally made it onto the north coast where things have changed dramatically. We anchored with Sargo in Cala Sant Miguel – a very nice little anchorage which we had to ourselves. Despite the huge hotel (and another being built) there were hardly any folks about this early in the season.

We moved onto what has become our favorite anchorage – Portinatx. It’s another small anchorage made even smaller due to the restrictions of sea grass – which is all over the place in the Balearics and we’re not allowed to anchor in it. As a result the anchorage is tiny – able to hand 3 or 4 boats – though by evening there were 9 boats in place – some anchored in the weed…

We took a lovely and rather unexpected clifftop walk to the lighthouse (tallest in the Balearics) and changed our minds about Ibiza.

Tomorrow we are off again – heading for Mallorca about 65 NM to the north east.