Snorkeling around…..

We have been on our delightful mooring buoy a few days now and seemingly not much to report.  We get up in the morning, go for a swim or maybe a paddle board, have a coffee, do some snorkeling…..etc etc. and so the wonderful days go by. One of the first jobs on day one was to inflate the paddle board and kayak and after that we were ready for anything;-)

Skipper Nigel adores his snorkeling and also likes to watch “boat TV” and there is certainly plenty of it here, especially during the weekend.  The buoy field is in one of the more sheltered spots on this side of the Menorca as it’s between Isla Colom and the main island.  It’s a very popular place to stop as in addition to the buoys it’s also possible to anchor here.  It’s also a short hop by dinghy to the beaches on Isla Colom so there is a lot of boat traffic.  Barring one idiot on a flyboard everyone is fairly courteous – not quite as much as the Sardinians but we can relax and watch the world go by without too many speeding boats or (even worse) jet skis flying past at close quarters.

One of our closest neighbours was a gigantic yacht called ph3 – it seemed somewhat out of place in amongst all the smaller boats and I couldn’t understand why it would be on a mooring buoy really.  Shortly after they arrived a tender with supplies and crew arrived and they started cleaning the deck while the “owners” took a naked swim !! It was all quite a sight that we really couldn’t avoid watching since it was right in front of us.  They were there for two days and an internet search tells us that it costs a mere 26,000€ for a week aboard (not including the extra tender boat, paddle boards, scuba equipment etc etc).

On Monday we were due to leave here (well, we’d come to the end of our booking)!but there was a bit of wind coming our way so we decided to change buoys and get a different view for a couple of days while we were likely to be boat bound.  We moved ourselves to a sheltered little spot on the other side of the buoy field and after a couple of attempts got ourselves onto a new buoy.  We radioed the marinero to tell him where we were and he kindly came over and then promptly moved us ….. what we thought was a sheltered spot was actually going to be quite exposed so he moved us onto a buoy next to his own boat (he lives aboard and manages the buoy field in the summer and sails south in the winter).  As it turned out that night we were very happy for his advice since we were rocking and rolling as a big swell came in and a fair bit of wind too.

After the swell had died down a couple of days later we headed over to the village, Es Grau – which is just under a mile away.  It was a bit of an adventure on the zodiac weaving through all the bigger boats and picking a route around the many rocks and outcrops that were along the way.  It was well worth it when we got a delicious coffee – our first since Sardinia.  The village is tiny and beautiful in a typical Menorcan style.  Probably one of those places where the population quadruples over the summer months.

So once again we are ready to move on, the winds have died down and we enjoyed a late afternoon swim, snorkel and paddle board before sunset on a wonderful mooring experience.   Onwards once again tomorrow……