Bonaire to ?

Altea
Thu 19 Sep 2013 20:34
39:47:67N 02:41:60E

19 September 2013

We took our time in the morning, because if we were going to the mainland, which was the plan, it was about 180 miles away which would take 36 hours and if we set off in the morning we would probably arrive late evening the next day. We didn't want to arrive at night, so if we set off later and took our time we could aim to sail over a couple of nights and arrive in the morning. Our intended destination was Sant Carles, 80 miles south west of Barcelona.

We went for a walk, had an omelet in a bar, caught up with laundry and showers etc.

I was concerned about the weather, and we could see the sea building outside the marina. We asked a boat that arrived if it was ok, they said it was fine....although they were all in their foul weather gear.

Then suddenly a surge developed in the mouth of the marina where we were, and Altea began to snatch at the mooring lines quite badly. We had to cast off, and the marina itself was fairly tight so we exited in reverse and set off out of the bay. The swell was pretty big, and after a while we were launching off the crest of one wave down into the trough and up the next. It was life jacket and clip on time. We had rigged the running back stays, intending to have a play with the cutter. However, although we had the sea state from the gale off Menorca we didn't have much wind. The worst of all worlds. After being battered about while I returned the backstays to their parking place, we put up full sail, but the swell was knocking us back. It would have been a long haul to tack out of the bay and it was easy to see that in the old days without an engine, it would have been possible to become "embayed". That was how Biscay got its reputation as a graveyard for square riggers.

Luckily for us we had 145 of Volvo's finest horses that could drag us through it.

L was a bit poorly - the first time we had succomed to sea sickness - and we were in a quandry. Sailing usually gives a much better motion, but the wind direction was such that if we turned round we would be wallowing badly with not enough power, if we went upwind we could get a bit of speed on, but were hammering into the oncoming sea. If we tried to head in the direction we actually wanted to go in, we were running at right angles to the increasing swell and rolling badly.

In the end we decided to go to our port of refuge, Soller; the only all weather harbour on the west coast. We sailed a bit, but motored more. It was 11 pm when we arrived, and a fair swell was running in through the mouth of the bay between the twin light houses. There were a lot of boats at anchor, and it had a great atmosphere. We found a gap and dropped anchor, settling into a good spot. Tomato soup for tea, with the sounds of a reggae band coming from one corner of the bay and saxophone from the other.