39:22.2N 03:14.0E

Friday 25^th July

Surprisingly peaceful night at Playa Palma Nova, despite all the dire warnings from Ewan the previous evening!

Set out for Cala Mondrago around 8.00am but there was no wind and virtually no swell this morning so we sat back for a 6 hour motor sail. As we rounded Punta Salinas (the South Eastern tip of Mallorca) the swell increased from the East, with the wind rising modestly from the South West, which made for a confused sea with two swells running at the same time! Arrived at Cala Mondrago around 2.00pm, but as the pilot book had warned, this was no place to be with the swell coming in from the East and besides that it was full of boats all rolling like mad at anchor! Certainly this was a shame as we had rather looked forward to returning to this beach which had some very good memories of a few summer holidays spent staying in my brother’s villa nearby with Tom and Ewan aged only 3 and 1.

Pressed on just a short distance to Cala d’Or, which I recall being a very posh (and expensive) marina, however ‘marina Cala d’Or’ actually sits in the Cala Llonga and on the North side of this inlet there two further calas, One of these is closed to boats to protect swimmers, but the second, Cala Gran provides shelter and anchoring for a few boats. There were of course already a few boats here, but there was room for us, close to the entrance and so with a bit of fiddling around (fickle wind and current circling around inside the bay) we dropped anchor and went for a swim.

We spent the rest of the afternoon here watching all the comings and goings of the various boats around us as well as the daring exploits of various youngsters jumping off the low cliffs and rocks into the surging sea below. Around 7.00 pm the channel outside our bay, leading to the marina, became something of a race track as all the flash lads came powering past on their way back to their moorings in a variety of large and expensive craft.

We decided that staying the night here was fairly pointless as the swell was still less than comfortable, so at 9.00pm we raised our anchor and set off for a night sail to Menorca.