The morning of the crossing arrived and with it the departure of all the yachts on our pontoon. We’d had various discussions with the other crews and were in agreement it looked like a great day to cross back to Mallorca. We watched Ione leave and then waited for the next door yacht to leave plus a small motor boat that was effectively blocking us in. We decided to wait until the various tourist boats had departed too so we had a calm exit from the port. It was gorgeous as we made our way down the channel and out into the sea.
Just as we got to the entrance to the port a huge ferry came straight into our path from the ferry port which is outside the town. Skipper Nigel just slowed us slightly so we didn’t get anywhere near it !
We first realised there was a distinct lack of wind once the ferry was past us and we were on open water, we thought perhaps we were still getting sheltered by the island but as the time passed we concluded…..no wind ! We couldn’t believe it – and I think that it made us more disappointed because we thought there might have been some !! Anyway, we put a brave face on it and motored on, luckily it was only 32 nautical miles. We were alongside “the Finnish boat” as it was described to us (not having met the crew) – they were heading to the same place as us and also looking for wind 😉 They were averaging a slightly faster speed than us mind you and soon overtook and left us behind – although they were always in our sights. The best thing about this crossing is that you’re never out of sight of land so there’s always the destination in front of you (which is a welcome sight).
We took turns on the helm in the afternoon so we both got a siesta – it tuned out this was fortuitous since we needed to be on our toes for our arrival at the buoy field (not that we knew it at the time). We have said on many an occasion “never a dull moment” and this day was full of a fair few dull moments – outclassed by a real fanfare of fun as we went to pick up a buoy. As I have written before the buoys are secured to the seabed (in this case in a field of protected sea grass) – you attach a rope from your boat onto them an they act as your anchor. Skipper Nigel got us up to the buoy really easily and I boat hooked it up with no problem…..but I couldn’t get the rope through the loop, dropped the boathook in the water and the fun began 😉 Dropping the boat hook wasn’t a disaster as we have two so Skipper pulled us back round and instead of going for the buoy I picked up the boathook. No problem, keep calm and try again …. which we did at least twice with the same problem. We persevered until I managed to drop both boathooks in the water ….. without a boathook we really couldn’t do anything. There was nothing for it but to jump in and swim for the boathooks – luckily there were no boats about and the water is as warm as bathwater at the moment. I retrieved the boathooks, passed them up to skipper (who had untied the dinghy from the back of the boat in the meantime) and clamboured back aboard. We took a couple of minutes to get our breath back and went for a different buoy – unbelievably we got it first time, got the rope tied off and heaved a huge sigh of relief!!!! As we looked around we realised we were in a beautiful spot and with some amazing examples of “how the other half live”
We spent the next day snorkeling and paddle boarding and generally relaxing. Also kind of watching the other boats to see if we were the only ones with boathook issues (or maybe it was operator error ;-)) We did see others struggling with getting their boathooks stuck in the loop of the buoy but no other crew ended up in the water, let’s hope for better luck next time. We may move on tomorrow – we are weather watching to see how it looks for our trip round Mallorca.
This time I’ll leave you with a short video of the dawn which was lovely here….and next time I’ll tell you how this came to be the last photo of my 30 year old scuba fins that Skipper Nigel lost 😉
The Adventures of Gemini J 