Sant Carles 40:37.24N 00:36.22E
Red Skies
David Alexander
Fri 11 Jun 2010 09:11
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We have now been back in Sant Carles for 5 days and
have almost got ourselves sorted after our Balearics trip.
Our last stop after Soller was San Telmo on the SW
corner of Mallorca. Here we picked up a mooring buoy provided free by the
Government of the Balearics and enjoyed a couple of days of relaxation and
swimming (at least David did).
 The bay at San Telmo
We had planned to leave at 4.00 pm for the
overnight crossing to Sant Carles but during the afternoon the anchorage became
progressively more crowded, some with pre-booked resevations for particular
mooring buoys which one can do either by phone or on the internet. Therefore we
decided to make a move at 3.00 pm and had a gentle sail out past the Isla
Dragonera before putting up the cruising chute. We then had a most enjoyable
broad reach in 8 to 9 knots of wind allowing Red Skies to surge along between
6.5 to 7 knots. The sailing was enhanced by the company of various types of
dolphins along the way.
Prudence necessitated taking down the chute 5 hours
later at dusk and to resort to motor-sailing, which was a shame but only
anticipated the inevitable by 2 or 3 hours when the wind died away. We were,
however, left with a swell on the quarter that made sleeping for the off-watch
person a bit of a trial. We also enjoyed (?) a night of spectacular lightning
displays over the mainland but fortunately they didn't move out to sea while we
were there. 17 hours later, at 8.00 am, we arrived at Sant Carles for breakfast,
showers and some sleep in that order.
Our Balearics trip had covered 503 nm, which
entailed 83 hours of motoring! In our 43 days away, we spent 2 nights
on passage, 29 nights at anchor or on mooring buoys (with 22 nights
consecutively) and 11 nights in marinas (8 of those being at Palma). We
didn't experience anywhere that charged for anchoring and we were only charged
once for a mooring (at Port Colom - honesty caused us to telephone a mobile
number and then to wait for the office to open for an hour in the morning.
However the charge was only 6 euros and the showers, which were adequate, were
included.)
One day after arriving back at Sant Carles, Alison
suddenly noticed that the carpet in the galley area was getting rapidly soaked.
Investigation revealed that we had sprung a leak from our hot water cylinder and
after some dismantling the problem proved to be a split gasket around the heater
element. Nicolas, the Marina Manager, was most helpful in contacting a
Spanish agent for the suppliers and a replacement part is on order.
Meanwhile, we are camping, as we have had to turn off the water pump and there
isn't an easy way to isolate the hot water circuit. Fortunately we are quite
close to the Marina facilities.
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