The Porto Colom Authority Capitainerie could not speak a word of English which made radio communication fun, but he did come out on his boat to direct us to our mooring. There was actually only one berth with enough depth for us. We were offered a mooring buoy too. We opted for the berth - the weather was not really fun for a dinghy. Anyway, he was very helpful and we were soon installed.

We were looking forward to walking around the headland the next day and enjoying the seaside town. The weather was good for us to sail to Minorca during the day on Sunday.  This would give us a couple of days to explore.

But the next morning the weather changed for the worse, even though it was not predicted, a rain storm came over the island, the sea became rough and a swell entered through the harbor entrance.

Bad news for us.

We were being really buffeted around. So much for going for a walk.  We didn’t fancy leaving the boat in these conditions.

When a 27 tonne boat pulls around a fixed cleat in the pontoon like a raging bull – something has to give

Thankfully by 4 pm the storm had passed but the swell in the harbor was awful and the boat was pitching and straining on the mooring lines – as 27 tonnes of boat reared and pulled at our cleats.

It didn’t look right.

We looked at each other.

We looked at the forecast weather

We looked at the waves crashing at the harbor entrance.

.. and decided we had but one option - leave the mooring and sail for Minorca.

The departure through the small entrance to the Port was going to be a problem because of the swell, but, we were also damaging the cleats on the boat.  There was no way we would be leaving the boat for a restaurant meal or settle to sleep tonight either.

We packed everything up, slipped the lines and made for the entrance whilst we could - before it got dark.

ESCAPE!!!!!

Towards the harbor entrance John put the engine on FULL. We wanted to get through the big waves at the entrance as soon as possible – no lingering to admire the red cliffs either side of the entrance for us on this visit! Besides those rocks to edges looked a little intimidating!

At it turns out, the entrance was really not that bad.

We were pleased to be out of that Port and it felt a lot safer being out in ocean than in that harbor with all those hard objects. 

We settled down to an unexpected night sail knowing we were going to arrive at Mahon, Minorca way before daybreak – again!