Moxie - Beck Family Adventure - Ibiza - Cala Binirras

Ibiza - Cala Binirras - Tombstoning

Moxie - Beck Family Adventure

Mike, Denise, Asia and Aranya Beck

Sun 14 Aug 2011 20:21

39.05.36N 001.27.04E Ibiza - Cala Binirras 28 July

Whilst we hung around for the generator engineer to make us priority I took the opportunity to change the engine oil, no drama there. The impellor inspection is not so straight forward as access is shocking. Anyway it was had it and it took me over two hours to get it out. I was advised last year not to bother buying an impellor puller as I'd never get the tool into such an awkward space, I wish I had one to know for sure! So I have added it to the shopping list, none of the chandleries in town had one. So here I am, having lunch - no oil in the engine - impellor now completely mangled but still stuck fast. The a motor cat comes and anchors a bit too close by, after a couple of minutes the woman driving advises me that I'll have to move as she is having engine troubles and obviously is too close. Being a cat she has two engines and we'd already been there four days so we just stayed put, well we had no option anyway but I hadn't bothered trying to explain that. Anyway after 30 minutes or so they upped anchor and moved further away. I'm not sure what she must have been saying about the bloody English boat.

I needed more petrol for the dinghy so decided to use jerry can diesel to top up Moxie's tank and refill them while I was there. I have four cans, two came with the boat - they were empty so I reconed I'd fill all four. Anyway for some reason I inspected the older empty cans before getting them filled. I found one to have what I think is diesel bug. It looks like the lumpy bits you get in wallpaper paste. Now the last thing I need is diesel bug in Moxie's fuel and I have previously used these cans so everything had to be treated to kill it off. Hopefully that's a happy ending and I never blog about diesel bug ever again. I am VERY pleased that by chance I decided to inspect the cans though.

I recon this is diesel bug. Whatever it is it should not have been in my jerry can.

The generator is starting reliably now, and it will run the battery charger which is the main priority so we'll come back for a further repair later.

We left St Antonio to the package tourists and headed north. Looking at the chart two places sprang out at me, Margaritas Islands and San Miguel, being a beer drinker San Miguel won the day.

We found a tiny Cala called Binirras close by San Miguel, it looked so inviting that we decided to put the anchor down - leaving San Miguel just a dinghy rise away in any case. Immediately outside the cala is a huge rock, the pilot book recons it looks like Queen Vic sitting on her throne. I guess so. Anyway it is massive and beneath the waterline it continues down 18 metres or so to the bottom.

The rock at Cala Binirras, to give scale the wee dot in the water is a kayaker. The rock can be scaled using ropes that are attached and we watched people jumping from the lap part.

The girls were desperate to follow suit, tombstoning off Queen Vic. I had a few issues with that, A - I'm not sure how easy it would be to climb up with kids. B - I recon it would be even harder or impossible to climb down with kids. C - Can you see how bloody high that is!

Anyway, we did a bit of confidence building with our own version on a slightly smaller scale off the walls in the cala.

Oh, and if you think these pictures are a bit blurry then apparently you can try taking photos of fast moving objects on full zoom from a rocking boat and we can compare.

We popped into San Miguel in the dinghy. It was not was I was hoping for, there's a massive, massive hotel (club med maybe?) there and no town to speak of. It has a nice beach but there's no brewery bikini girls handing out unlimited free samples to all comers. When we returned to Moxie we were greeted with a familiar sight. Tengy - Mike and Mandy that we met last year with Cape in the river and then again in Portimao.

Tengy in Binirras.

I love the wee boat sheds.

The whole cala is sheer sides like this and is mostly 8 - 10 metres deep right up to the walls. We did a lot of swimming and snorkeling here and hope to come back.