Another early start, another beautiful morning as we crept out of Sóller round the stunning, rugged north coast of Mallorca. Once again we were sailing at sunrise this time island hopping across to Menorca. The crossing started fabulously with calm waters and less wind than forecast giving us plenty of time to enjoy the spectacular coastline.
We even saw some dolphins popping their fins slowly and gracefully out of the water around a fishing pot. We needed to be on alert to watch out for them all the time (fishing pots that is, although dolphins are always a bonus). In our experience most of the Spanish coast has to be treated with real caution when it comes to pots and nets – in the Balearic waters they do seem to be slightly better marked with flags than on the mainland where sometimes they are literally a water bottle floating with a net attached (really dangerous for us if we were to get caught up in one). As we reached the north eastern tip of the island the coastline was even more spectacular – and the wind was too as it picked up from just a few knots to 20 almost instantaneously.
We were fairly disappointed that we couldn’t quite catch the wind in our sails. We knew it was a risk but we were really hoping from the forecast that we’d get wind but it just wasn’t quite right for our heading. Normally we would have changed course and sailed but it would have added a fair bit of time and after our half six start we were keen to make the crossing. The swell was slightly against us and to be honest it was a bit of a long afternoon motoring towards Menorca. The bonus was that we could see both islands (there’s only around 30 nautical miles between them) so it was a nice journey from that point of view.
Around half past five we came to the entrance to the port of Ciutadella – just as secretive and spectacular as it was last time we were here. We found our way onto a much improved pontoon berth and immediately wondered what all the noise was. In Ciutadella the moorings are below the old city walls and above us was some sort of race with full on, full volume announcements and music. Further investigation when I went to the Ports IB office told me that it was the “Cami de Cavalls” we were so lucky to be here and witness a very small part of this event which unfolded right in front of us all evening and all up to midnight the following day.
The Cami de Cavalls is a long distance walk I have wanted to do since last time we were here – a 185km circuit of the Menorca coastline, both challenging and spectacular. It would take a couple of weeks…..only the Cami de Cavalls entrants we saw were running it as an endurance event – between 8am on the Friday morning and midnight on the Saturday night ! The ultra athletes would run, walk, eat and sleep a little all in the aim of being finishers of this amazing event. There were other distances too 27km, 44km, 85km and 100km) – all day on the Saturday we watched people running past the boat and up the hill to the finish – we were clapping them on in encouragement whilst sitting enjoying a drink aboard.
We took the zodiac out on Saturday evening and docked up by a restaurant and got even closer to the runners – it was amazing to think they’d been participating almost since we had left Mallorca.
Sunday morning arrived and I was motivated to walk/run a little along the route myself – it took me past some spectacular bays. There is a bit of a mini heatwave here at the moment so we spent the afternoon relaxing aboard. In the evening we went out for drinks then enjoyed a pizza aboard – saying hello again to Nicolas on board Clipperton, our neighbours from Andraitx who had sailed round the southern coast of Mallorca to arrive on the next berth once again. All in all a fabulous weekend here on Menorca.
The Adventures of Gemini J 