To Cala Gossalba
Altea
Sat 12 Jul 2014 11:56
30 June 2014
We had another good sailing day to the North Eastern tip of the island, Cap de Formentor. We are retracing our steps here from when we were blown down to Soller at the end of last year. The sea on that occasion had been brewed up by a Mistral gale blowing down to Minorca. This time, even with a more benign wind, the sea was still confused and bumpy. A look at the chart provides some of the explanation. In places, the sea bed rises 500m in less than a mile. It is particularly steep here, but there are similar escarpments round the whole of the Balearics, with Majorca and Minorca sitting on top of a plateau. When the sea hits the ramp it creates a short sea which has a particular reputation for being dangerous in a blow. For today, it is nothing like that, but we could see swells proceeding in both directions - a longer, deeper swell rolling Westwards, and on top of it, heading East, a shorter version.
We stopped short of Pollensa in a narrow cala, Gossalba. The water was a lovely clear green over weed and sand. We anchored bang in the middle with our nose into the breeze that was blowing down the cala and out to sea. We swam around to check the set of the anchor in a sandy patch, to make sure there were no rocky outcrops and to make sure we had room to swing if the wind changed. It was pretty tight, and with the usual anchor chain scope of 4x depth, we need quite a bit of room. Sure enough, next morning we had done a complete 180 and were pointing in the other direction, with our stern only about 15m from the rocky face at the head of the cala.
One of outstanding chores was to service the outboard, but in the time it took to get it down onto the dinghy the swell increased to an uncomfortable level and we decided to move on before it got worse. We put the dinghy back on the davits and cut short the girls first attempts at splicing -upped anchor, put down the bimini and left for Minorca to make most of a cracking 22 knot breeze on the beam, making a good 7 knots. Pollensa would have to wait until another time.
We made the 30 mile crossing in around four and a half hours, once again delighted to sail all the way. We dropped anchor in the broad bay to the east of Punta Curniola, on the North side of the island to shelter from the strong Southerlies. We shared the bay with a large catamaran and three other well spaced boats. The bay is no beauty, and the geology of the place is so very mixed and rocky that we could be in a large quarry. Although Minorca is the oldest of the Balearics in geological terms, said to have split from Corsica in the dim and distant past, in this particular bay it looks like work is only just beginning.