38:58.9N 01:32.3E

Ibiza

We sailed a 22 hour passage down the west coast of Mallorca to Puerto de Santa Eulalia del Rio, Ibiza where we were due to meet Peter and Lorie with their 4 ½ year old daughter.  We made it in plenty of time for their late night arrival and managed to get a berth in the very crowded marina with Peter’s help by phone from mainland Spain.  Peter and Lorie run the sailing school in Spain where Mike taught for some time and they used to run a sailing school in Ibiza so they know the island very well.

It was great to have so much insider knowledge even though this included several scary things such as a lunchtime anchorage close to rocks that we would never have attempted on our own and crossing a rocky bar where the depth under the keel fell to less than 1 metre.

One lovely, and less scary, anchorage had Queen Victoria sitting in the middle.

Ibiza is very crowded because the Spanish all take their holidays in August but it hasn’t been as unpleasant as we feared because the scenery is very lovely and it is very entertaining watching other yachts.

The best entertainment came when a yacht motored close by and dropped his anchor.  And all his anchor chain. Every last bit.  Because the end hadn’t been tied on.  Peter watched it all and quickly summoned the rest of us to watch.  The crew were then paralysed in disbelief and did absolutely nothing other than look over the side for quite some time while their boat drifted away from the spot in question.

They did eventually swing into action by going to another large motorboat that had a diver and diving equipment of board.