Off to Mallorca
Innamorata
Steve & Carol
Tue 3 May 2022 18:00
We set off nice and early heading up the coast, we saw a mile or so away Rockhopper coming out of Portinax followed as we neared by Toodle-oo (who we hadn’t realised was heading to Mallorca today as well). The wind had been blowing down the island and as we got level with Portinax we bore away and started to sail, we knew it would be close hauled to begin with but the forecast was for the wind to go round further to the south so things should have improved- they didn’t 🙄. After a short while we put a reef in the main and reduced the Genoa to stop us heeling and make it a bit more comfortable, the autopilot did a grand job of steering to the wind and edging east a few degrees whenever it could meaning we actually managed to sail a better course than the others, to be fair Rockhopper is a catamaran and so doesn’t point to wind well so they were heading to Monaco for a while 😬.
The wind stayed pretty easterly we were heading for the south west corner of the island, as we approached the wind did veer round to the south but as by then we had to tack it didn’t help much! On our second tack I got a soaking of salt water which just about summed up the day! We know why we don’t head windward if we can help it as it was pretty uncomfortable most of the time, I even couldn’t manage galley duties which doesn’t happen very often! Anyway we ended up not tacking again but motoring the last mile or so and anchored on the northeast side of the bay in Santa Ponsa, it looked like it would offer us better protection from the coming wind and swell than the other side which seemed the more popular anchorage. We manager to tuck right in and were the nearest boat to the head of the bay. Toodle-oo came in and anchored on the other side and Rockhopper ended up in Andraitx.