39:52.6N 04:18.4E

Saturday 26th July

The forecast for this trip was the South Westerly wind to continue through the night, which would be ideal, but of course that is not how it all happens at sea! We came out of Cala Gran to find a gentle North Easterly blowing which was just about exactly what we did not want or need. The swell had died away out at sea and with the light headwind, we simply motor sailed for the first three hours. I have a theory that there is no natural swell out in these islands, it is just all the powerboats roaring around like headless chickens that causes it all!

As soon as it got fully dark I started to see lots of faint flashing lights ahead of us on the starboard side. Nothing was showing on the radar, but when viewed through binoculars, each light actually showed up as a group of lights very close together. Given that our course was clear of these, I pressed on and can only assume that they were perhaps marking fishing pots or nets, but if that is the case they are the very first ones we have ever seen lit in any way, in any country!

At Midnight a huge fireworks display started directly behind us, presumably in or near Cala d’Or, but as we were now 20 miles away it was not something we could properly enjoy, but even at this distance it was possible to see that the display was very impressive and for good measure it continued until 12.45, when the massive finale lit up the sky.

By 2.00am the wind had risen to around 10 knots and had backed enough to allow us to sail. Given that we did not want to arrive until daylight, we unrolled the smaller headsail and cut the engine. We were able to sail our chosen course, but only just and the boat speed through the water varied between 3 knots and a heady 5 knots, however it did mean that whoever was off watch, got a better sleep.   Sarah then saw even brighter lights which she thinks may have been marking an underwater cable (?) as again there were no boats showing on the radar.

7.00am saw us approaching the Southern tip of Menorca, with a steady stream of charter flights dropping over our heads as they made their final approach runs into the island (must be Saturday!) but the wind had shifted by now and we were not able to make the course we wanted to cut inside an island (Isla del Aire), but we were still in no hurry so we made the best course we could and had to make several tacks before we were able to finally, in a dying wind, approach Puerto de Mahon which is a very attractive commercial, naval, fishing and yachting port, situated up a long and deep cala. Within the confines of the cala there are a number of brilliant anchorages, providing safe, calm and very picturesque refuges and was in the best of these (cala Taulera) that we found plenty of space and dropped our hook and again went immediately for a swim.

In the late morning we launched the dinghy (Doris) and motored out through the Canal de San Jordi (a man made link to provide a second access route to the bay) and over to a town on the main island to do some essential shopping.

The afternoon and evening was spent lazing and reading a paper (I wonder what poor old Gordon Brown does on his holiday as he certainly will not be wanting to read any papers!)

Tomorrow is to be a day of relaxing and sorting out some of the lockers prior to departing around 9.00pm on our two and half day odyssey to Sicily.