Palma 39:33.96N 02:38.08E
Red Skies
David Alexander
Thu 6 May 2010 16:17
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Our visit to Palma has been longer than we
anticipated, firstly because an annoying fault in the communications between our
chartplotters has been hard to track down, and secondly because the weather
turned for the worse. On Monday we had torrential rain with a lot of flooding in
Palma. The local paper the next day said that this was the most intense downpour
since 1934 and unseasonly cold, with snow falling in Mallorca above
800m.
Yesterday, we travelled by the delightful electric
railway from Palma to Soller. However, Soller had aslo been hit by the storm and
2 boats had sunk in the harbour. When we visited we didn't see the afflicted
boats but we did see masses of bamboo that had been flushed down the river into
the harbour. This was also the case at Palma.
We have been staying in the Real Club de Nautico,
which is very convenient for getting into the old town. Prior to Monday, the
weather was warm and mostly sunny and we took full advantage for
sightseeing, even taking the open top bus around the town and out to Castel del
Bellver. Since then, we have either been sheltering or waiting for a technician
to return to continue the exhaustive diagnosis of where our data communications
is being disrupted.
While we were here the Palma International Boat
Show was in progress in the next basin - so we simply had to go. We were
astounded at how uncrowded it was, positively empty, and several of the erected
stalls left vacant. Clearly the global recession was being felt, despite the
size and price of some of the boats for sale. We managed to beat all previous
records for visiting boat shows in investing the least amount of time and the
least cash on our visit.
 Palma Boat Show from the outside
 An old windmill on the town walls overlooking the
marina
 More windmills
 Palma has its own version of Barcelona's Spanish
Town, called Poble Espanol, which has copies of famous buildings from
around Spain
 View of Palma harbour from Bellver
Castel
 View (of Pujol de'n Banya) from electric train on
route to Soller. The train has been making this journey daily since 1912
and it was noticeable that they kept the facilities spotlessly clean. On
arrival at Soller we then took an electric tram down the the Port about 15
minutes away.
 Soller harbour and some of the bamboo
 Another view of Soller harbour
As we now have a working navigational sytem,
although our technician was unable to explain what had changed to
remedy the problem, other than taking out the multiplexer, swopping it for
a new one, and then replacing the original when the same faults occurred, we
intend to set off tomorrow for the Islas de Cabreras, which are about 30 miles
to the South East of here..
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