Passage to Menorca

The windless 193 mile passage from Carloforte to Menorca took us 46.5 hours. Luckily there was lots to see – shooting stars during the night watch, ‘jelly tots’ in their hundreds bobbing past us, more striped dolphin, a small school of yellow fin tuna swimming alongside, and sightings of a small sunfish and a loggerhead turtle.

Jelly tots, tuna and turtles

We caught a ‘jelly tot’ to have a closer look. According to our internet research, these are Velella vellela or ‘by-the-wind sailors’. Each individual ‘jelly tot’ is a colony of all-male or all-female polyps. They live on plankton which they catch by means of tentacles that hang down in the water and have a small, stiff sail that means that they get blown along (or on to beaches if the wind is in the wrong direction – we’ve seen them before, stranded on the beach in Aber). They are, apparently, usually deep blue in colour – I think we actually caught was the abandoned sail bit, as there was no blue squishy bit underneath. They are related to Portuguese man o’ war ‘jellyfish’.

We caught a ‘jelly tot’ for a closer look.

We’ve had plenty of dolphins swim with the boat, but this was the first time that we’d had a tuna escort. Half-a-dozen large, yellow-fin tuna swam alongside for about 3 hours. Yes of course we tried to catch them – they swam up to the lure, had a quick look and then carried on swimming.

Our tuna escort.

The loggerhead turtle.

Yet another photo of a sunset...

Cala Taulera, Mahon

When we arrived in Cala Taulera, LIBERTINE, TUTKUM and LONPAUL were already installed. We had a bit of cashflow crisis that meant that we couldn’t afford to buy diesel to move on. Luckily we had lots of tins on board and plenty to do. The children played in the water, on the beach, on the boats, in the dinghies and on the kayak. It rained – half filling the dinghy with fresh water, so we did some laundry.

Cala Taulera.

David, Antoine and Bryn under a tarpaulin watching the rugby in the cockpit in the rain.

We explored around the fort – La Mola.

We found a cave for BBQs with Fabienne and Christophe (LONPAUL), Sarah and Jade (CARPE DIEM), Nur and Baha (TUTKUM).

Adults talking, kids playing with fire.

LIBERTINE, CARPE DIEM and TUTKUM moved on, LONPAUL moved onto the hard to work on their ongoing engine problem (see it isn’t just us that has technical hitches), and Hilary, Paul and Ed (PAX NOSTRUM) moved in. It was Hilary’s birthday, so we had a cave birthday BBQ with music.

Hilary with her (lemon drizzle) birthday cake and the obligatory ‘fork handles’.

Paul and David with the guitars; note the tasteful arrangement of beer cans – what all the best caves are wearing this year.

Beach Buoy Blues

When our cashflow crisis finally resolved, we filled up with stores, fuel and water and headed off along the south coast of Menorca. We had a bit of a shock to find that the anchorage in Punta Prima had shrunk drastically and had become a less sheltered, deep-water anchorage as the swimmer buoys had been moved further offshore. The same was true of our old favourite, Cala en Porter. We spent a rolly night at anchor in Cala Son Saura before jumping off for Mallorca. Over the next couple of weeks we heard reports about restrictions being imposed in Cala Taulera – that boats were only allowed to anchor there if there was no room left in the marinas in Mahon – which was a bit scary as the port was deserted and they were still charging over 100 EUROS per night (not including water and electric). We also heard that stays were restricted to 3 days and that the number of boats was limited to 31. Looks like we might have just caught the last bit of unrestricted anchoring in Menorca!

Next stop: Mallorca.