38.44.072N 1.24.692E

At last we have managed to extract ourselves form Denia. Much to the amazement of the Marina staff we paid for our Water and electricity on Thursday evening and slipped our mooring lines on Friday morning.

On Thursday night we were all prepared and read to go. The wind picked up and blew strongly from the east – it then dropped – then picked up blowing from the North – it then dropped – then picked up and blew from the south. We recorded wind speeds of 30+ knots – so this was not just a little breeze. During one of the “blows” a boat came into the space one away from us (the space immediately next to us was empty). The skipper was on his own and came in very calmly and under control – however the wind suddenly picked up and blew him onto us. Luckily it all happened gently but fairly quickly. We managed to get to a good point to fend him off to protect both his and our boat and two other people rushed over to help him secure the boat. He was most apologetic, and once secured he came over and gave us a bottle of wine for being so calm about it.

On Friday we said goodbye to Denia and headed east towards the Balearic islands. Our destination was Formentera a small island south of Ibiza. The wind was not too bad a direction for us – but there was quite a bit of a confused swell that we weren’t expecting. After an eleven hour motor sail with a 1 to 2meter swell we arrived at Calo de s’Oli. (It was a pretty rough crossing to be honest) We had hoped there would be a mooring buoy free for the night – but unfortunately there wasn’t so we had to anchor. The instructions we had been given were to anchor in sand. The sand patches were actually very small and after three attempts we managed to drop the anchor into sand and get it to set. The first time we dropped the anchor the chain jumped off the anchor windlass and started free falling into the sea. After a few scrapes and bruises on Anne we managed to stop the free falling chain and fix the problem.

It was a bit rolly during the night due to the swell. But we had a reasonable night. We both got up a few times in the night to check we hadn’t dragged our anchor. We ended up in exactly the same spot as we started from last night – so a successful first night at anchor!