Barcelona to Mallorca trip
Heerenxvii
Sun 5 Aug 2012 09:01
A.
At 4am we leave Masnou, and we start motorsailing with 3bft wind, but wait, why is the main halyard going slow? This looks like the same problem I had when sailing with A at St Lucia. The line was then jammed in the mast top. In the caribbean this occurred after the main sail was hoisted, which resulted in a lot of stress back then, since we were not able to lower the main for several hours. This time, I noticed it while hoisting and so we used the Dirk as the main halyard and vice versa.
During the 18 hour trip to Mallorca, the wind became weaker and variable in direction, so we dropped and hoisted one or both sails several times. As an experiment we had the engine run the whole trip at exactly 1800 rpm, resulting in a consumption of roughly 1.5 liter per hour, at a speed of 6 to 7 knots, so about 1 liter for 4 miles, being almost 7km per liter! Not your average car consumption, but than again the boat weighs 10 times more kilos :)
Underway, we saw lots of dolphins. Usually in groups, they arrived at our boat and started swimming around, underneath and just a meter in front of the bow. Next to the many dolphins we saw sailing fishes, and yes, a whale! A Pilot Whale to be exact, at first it looked like an unmanned kayak :)
After a long day we arrive at 2030 in Soller on Mallorca. Soller has a nice bay and there was enough space and time to drop anchor before sunset. Mission accomplished, kind of..