It was very cloudy and a little choppy as we made our way round the Mallorcan coastline. Since the weather was a basically dull we had decided to go for a hop round to Porto Cristo which took us about 6 hours. It is a very nice port that we visited a few year ago and we were happy to be back.
We had to wash the boat the following morning after a burst of Sahara rain had hit us in Pollenca and again here (the showers of rain were less than 10 minutes each time but they dumped such a lot of sand it was unbelievable !) We went for coffee while Gemini J was drying and found ourselves sitting at a café where literally every other table was drinking pints of beer or cocktails – it was only eleven am and the café didn’t even serve toast !!! The views were lovely mind you and it was really good coffee. We are clearly in quite a touristy spot 😉 An ideal place to buy replacement fins !! I found a great little shop with a nice selection of snorkelling gear and ended up with two new pairs of fins, a new snorkeling buoy to make us more visible and a hat to replace my one that blew off somewhere off Menorca ! A very successful expedition 😉
This is a port where the mooring is along the quayside where people basically walk along right in front of the boats. We were a bit bemused by the fact that people kept stopping and looking and taking photos of us and Gemini J. It wasn’t until day two that someone finally mentioned Rafa Nadal …..a little bit of research told us we we’re moored up right opposite his catamaran!! Now I probably shouldn’t say that we’d commented on not liking the color, or the fact that it has no mast / sails or even the fact that it needed a jolly good clean after a dump of Sahara rain ! Genuinely it is an amazing thing to see but one piece of advice if you’re thinking of investing in one is that a dark colored hull really shows the dirt 😉
We were weather watching a lot whilst in Porto Cristo as there was a bit of stormy weather forecast – but the clear blue skies told a different story and everyone I asked seemed to doubt the forecasts. We use various bits of information to decide on sailing, the key one for us is an app called Windy which tells us the wind and sea conditions. We usually back it up with the Spanish weather service AEMET – this is where official weather warnings come from. There were some thunderstorm warnings for the afternoons running up to the weekend but the mornings were clear. Bearing all this in mind on Thursday morning we decided to head for the island of Cabrera. This is a natural park – no anchoring and lots of rules to protect the wildlife on the deserted island. We anticipated a stormy afternoon but anticipated arriving on our buoy ahead of any rain.
It was absolutely glorious as we departed Porto Cristo – saying goodbye to the island of Mallorca as we left. It was in fact a gorgeous morning and we wouldn’t have thought more about it, although having read the forecasts we were looking at the sky and watching the cloud formations.
Sure enough we could see storm clouds forming way in the distance and behind us and looking forward towards Isla Cabrera was bright blue sky and lovely blue sea. Looking behind us we could see clouds and a clear storm front following us in the distance.
As we were nearing Cabrera and the surrounding islands we could see water spouts formed by the storm clouds which were still behind us. It was only as we reached the islands that the clouds started to come over us.
The view on the left below is as we were approaching the islands, the view on the right is how it looked looking back after we had passed.
We really were amazed how beautiful this little island is but we didn’t have too much time to look as the wind had really picked up and we still had the small matter of getting on the mooring buoy. Thanks again to brilliant Skippering and well laid buoys we got it first time !! I was most relieved. As the winds were gusty we decided to put two lines on the buoy and it took no persuasion for Skipper Nigel to don his new flippers and swim round to attach the second line 😉 The weather by this time was cloudy and we avoided any rain. We spent the evening on some of the best snorkeling (actually probably the best) we have had in the med. There were even cormorants who would let you swim right up close to them – so wonderful.
The storm front made its way over the island overnight and we awoke to grey skies the following morning. Time for more Skipper snorkelling and a review of our options for the day. This was made distinctly more difficult by the fact that we had absolutely no internet connection or even phone signal ….so, no way to review the weather ….we needed to use our eyes, ears and instincts and see things the old fashioned way – well, after a coffee of course 😉
The Adventures of Gemini J 