Ibiza/Formentera to Mainland Spain

Austins' Travels
Chris & Lynn Austin
Sat 17 Sep 2011 16:33

38:38.31N 00:04.68E

An early departure from Formentera at 0600 meant a very quiet day motoring with calm seas to mainland Spain. In the afternoon the wind came up and we were able to motor sail at over 7 knots (that’s fast for us, by the way). The anchorage we chose at Calpe had some protection from the south west wind which had built during the afternoon as it was right underneath an enormous rock face of the headland. About an hour after anchoring the wind started to do strange things and was gusting from several directions – mostly north east – the opposite direction to when at sea!! We put this down to the effects of the rocky headland. The gust were pretty strong and continued till the early hours. This meant getting up every couplke of hours to check we were still in place. But our new anchor performed very well and we didn’t move an inch even though we were sailing around sometimes through 360 degrees (this is not a popular manoeuvre with anchors, generally as they tend to break out and you sail off into the sunset – or massive rock in this case).