The Balearics
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38 46.7N 01 25.7E Puerto del Espalmador We left Cartegena for the second time on Sunday morning
having worked on the electrical charging problem for most of the previous day
and with help from Tony Belchamber (China Blue) and Graham Whittington(Our
marine engineer at home in Sussex) we were able to keep the power to the main
batteries up by using an additional lead to feed power from the engine battery.
The offending part has been ordered from Sterling Products and will be
dispatched today to my sister who will then bring it to Mallorca next week! Our passage of 140 miles went smoothly in that there were no
most mechanical incidents, the sun shone the sea was relatively smooth and we
motored-sailed all the way - 23 hours. We saw several ships during the
day but after dark only a fishing boat in the distance and a couple of yachts
heading the same way as us. The stars were very clear with no light pollution
and the moon rose very late to rise making the Milky way and shooting stars
easy to spot! However it was not all straight forward as we now have a
problem with our headsail furling system. I was unable to get the full genoa
out during the evening and once Rob was back on watch neither was he. It seems
that the top part of the furler is not rotating so we are going to have to
unwind the whole sail manually and lower it to see what is wrong! Obviously we
will need a windless day so hope to get that job done tomorrow morning. We arrived in this tranquil bay around 0800 this morning it
is glorious, surrounded by low lying islands and sand dunes . There was one
suitably sized mooring buoy free so we duly picked it up had some coffee and
went to bed! When we awoke around mid-day the bay had started to fill with day
trip boats – a mixture of power and sail but as I write this most are
leaving so it would appear we will be back to the half dozen that were here
when we arrived. I have had two swims off the back of the boat – the
water is around 19 degrees so tolerable- but too cold for Rob! We saw a
swordfish jumping out of the water as we motored in this morning and the fin of
what looked like a pilot whale too. The German boat on the next buoy seem to be
naturists and we have been treated to the dangly bits all day I’m
surprised they don’t get sunburnt!! Rob thinks they are only trying to
shock the very posh new Oyster 46 which is flying a white ensign!! (On the next
buoy further on.) We have been in touch with Richard and Alison from Sealion
(participants in the rally Portugal last year), they are cruising here and we
hope to see them later in the week. We plan to cross to Mallorca at the weekend
and possibly spend a couple of nights in the Cabrera islands if we have time
before heading for Porto Colom to meet up with Norma and Keith (Jacky’s
sister and husband) who have a villa nearbye in Cala d’Or. We need to get an electrical engineer to fit the new part so
hope to get some contact details from Rob on Serafina (another Rally Portugal
participant). We are pleased to have achieved our target mileage –
500 per month; as today marked 580 miles from leaving Lagos on the 7th
of May – not bad going for 10 days. We can now relax for a couple of weeks before the big sail
to Sardinia in June. Pictures to follow. I
am using the Free version of SPAMfighter. |