On to the Balearics

The Costa del Sol is not really a cruising coast. I has no sheltered anchorages, lots of fancy marinas housing super yachts with prices to match and high rise hotels. The plan was to pass by this lot and head to Ibiza in 2 or 3 overnight hops but, having had such excellent winds behind me for a week they were about to turn against us. Gentlemen they say don't sail into the wind, the leaning plays havoc with the gin and tonic, so we decided to take advantage of 2 days of calm and motor the 400 miles to Ibiza, it would take about 2 days and nights .

Calm, easy going, no excitement - right?? It was not to be. At 6 am on the second morning whilst I was enjoying a cup of tea and watching the stars, the engine coughed, hicuped, coughed again - and died. Another blockage I thought, no big deal. I got the tools out, stripped the usual offending place for a blockage - it was clean as a whistle. Hmm. Well, I was sure it was lack of fuel so it had to be a blockage somewhere. At this point I was getting a little stressed, 50 miles from land, not a breath of wind, no engine and unsure if I could get it going again. Head down, I was sure it was fuel starvation, find the problem. I broke the fuel feed system into about 5 different section and set to giving each section the suck test - with the mark 1 mouth. How I love the taste of diesel in the morning! If I sucked diesel through then that section was clear. After 3 section3 and several mouth fulls of diesel fuel I got not a blockage, nor diesel but air - hmm, not what I expected at all. Further investigation turned up a split fuel pipe where the pipe attached to the filter - the engine was sucking not fuel but air - bingo! I cut off the end of the offending pipe, reattached it and after what ended up being a two hour stoppage as we drifted around the Mediterranean, away we went.

We arrived that evening in a pleasant cove on the island of Formentera, just east of Ibiza.
Not to be out done, Woody also had to have his own little experience with a piece of pipe. Melanie had seen him chewing a piece of pipe he had found, about 6" long and 1/2" diameter and thought nothing of it, he wasn't doing any harm chewing that. It wasn't until the next morning that Melanie thought about the pipe again when she found it left in Woodys morning pile on the fore deck - how I do not know but he had managed to swallow a 6" length of pipe, it had gone straight through him and out the other end - that is one hell of a gut that can handle that, he should have ended up in hospital! We shall be more careful in future.

We had a pleasant lazy couple of days here then headed over to Ibiza. Ibiza town, much to our surprise, turned out to be very pleasant indeed; pretty, uncrowded and a nice first taste of the Med.


We wanted particularly to spend some time in Menorca, reputedly the nicest of the Balearics, before coming back to Mallorca to meet the kids in a couple of weeks so we beatled up to Menorca in 3 pleasant days sailing in succession. The wind was on shore which sadly ruled out anchoring because there was no shelter which meant we had to go into marinas.
Our last night on Mallorca we moored up in a typical marina in typical Med fashion - sardines -  with what seemed like every other boat in the Med! How I hate marinas -get me to a pleasant Menorcan anchorage!


What a pretty place Menorca is. The coast of Mallorca was scarred all the way up by high rise hotels and beach resorts; not so Menorca where they are said to have stopped the building after the first few went up in the '80's having seen what happened to Mallorca. As a result Menorca has retained much of its island charm.

We found some lovely coves to anchor in.













We have a line from the stern to the rocks here to stop us swinging round the anchor with the wind and hitting the rocks as there is so little space.





One of the coves was surrounded by dozens of caves inhabited thousands of years ago and still used by lovers - a couple of which had left their mark in the rock!









Walking round the caves we came across this little chap scuttling into the under growth.





We had a couple of bike rides to the north side of the island and one day met up with Nigel and Ali Christopher for lunch who were out here for a holiday.


After 3 very pleasant days the weather turned and we had 5 days of damp air, no sunshine and crime of crimes - rain! Everything got pretty damp on board so when the sun came out again  yesterday and it was time to head back to Mallorca, we did our Chinese laundry bit; Woody couldn't make up his mind for all the cushions he had to choose from to sit on!

We are now on Porto Cristo on the east coast of Mallorca where we are leaving the boat for a couple of days to go to Madrid to meet up with some Australian friends who are over here for a months holiday.