Yesterday, having just written an email to our friends Klaus & Christine who are sailing their Vega along the Algarve, boasting that we had spent 4 consecutive nights at anchor, I realised that the wind had changed and strengthened and we were exposed in Talamanca. A quick consultation, then decision, and we weighed anchor and rounded the headland and made for Ibiza harbour. The waves were 1.5m to 2m and very confused around the headland, and we were hugging a lee shore of vicious rocks on which there were still the remains of a motor boat that had been smashed into pieces, a vivid reminder of the price of inattention. Ferries and motor boats raced us for the entrance to the harbour, but there was plenty of room for everyone to enter at the same time. We were still in some shock about how swiftly the weather and the sea had changed from warm, turquoise, and welcoming to grey, violent and hostile. We dropped a fender overboard, but in the calmer water of the harbour it was easy to recover it. By eight, an hour or so after Faith had started cooking supper, she was able to resume, safely tied up here in Botafoch marina. 

Today Faith went to look at Talamanca and the bay was unrecognisable: rollers breaking where we had paddled in the emerald shallows. 

Yesterday, before that excitement, we took the ferry across the harbour and Allen up to Dalt Vila, the old town. It is exceptionally interesting, and beautifully preserved, from Carthaginian graveyard to Cathedral created from former mosque, from successive fortifications to steep narrow streets of whitewashed houses, delights at every turn. 

Yesterday was the anniversary of Beowulf's departure from Wivenhoe a year ago. It will be a few years before Beowulf's returns. 

T

Tom Fenton
SV Beowulf, V2977

+44 7740 928369