Palma de Mallorca and Passage to Gibraltar - 25 September

Dearloves
Sun 25 Sep 2005 01:38
First just a few final pictures of Cabrera - it was such an lovely place!
 
Keoma on her mooring
 
View from Lighthouse
 
View of Castle from Lighthouse
 
Sea Anenome
 
Balearic Lizard (only found on Cabrera)
 
Arriving in Palma
 
We had a hectic couple of days in Palma - we wanted to replace the sail batten that we had lost as well as buy other things that we would need for the Atlantic crossing.  Palma is famous for its chandlers and we found most of the things on the shopping list, some of which were quite obscure.  We left Palma on Friday afternoon for the long passage to Gibraltar.  Having looked at the pilot book I reached the conclusion that there are not many places on Ibiza that are unspoilt and as we wouldn't be able to join in the nightlife (with the children in tow) we decided to give Ibiza a miss.  We are also very keen to get to Gibraltar, which we are looking forward to visiting and also to get some miles under the keel on our route to the Canaries for the start of the ARC.
 
View of Cathedral from Keoma
 
Alice and Pip with a statue
 
 
Beautiful park
 
Pip
 
As I write we are around 30 miles off Cartegena, in Southern Spain.  We have sailed around 200 miles of the route to Gibraltar - only 270 to go!  Yesterday at twilight we were joined by 3 bottlenose dolphins (sorry, no pictures as I didn't want to camera flash them) which swam at the bow for around 15 minutes.  We also saw amazing phosphosence in the water last night - luminous green balls of algae passing the boat.
 
So far the sea has been quite flat and there has not been much wind.  The picture below isn't very exciting but it does help to illustrate what it is like!  The view is only sea and sky.
 
Sea View
 
Charlie with a beard!
 
This evening we caught a tuna, which was very exciting.  We will be eating it tomorrow night.
 
Showing off the catch
 
Gasping for a drink
 
Watching closely
 
We also crossed the Greenwich meridian (860 miles south of London) this evening.