In Mahon, Menorca

We have anchored safely in Mahon and will be here for at least a couple of days. The passage over from Mallorca was uneventful and the wind was even better than we expected.  Because of the better winds we started getting too close too fast and decided to slow down because it was still well before sunrise. Around 2 AM we pulled in most of the sails and slowed to about 2 knots. The wind was on the beam and we had some small rolloers coming from the starboard side. After we slowed down, the boat lost the momentum to carry it smoothly through the rollers and we started getting some unplesant rocking side to side with each roller. For me this made sleep improbable. Oh well, plenty of time to sleep later.
Last night at about 6 or so the wind shifted to the Northeast just like the weather preditions said it would. I guess there is a first time for everything. That wind shift was our first taste of the Mistral winds of the Med. They came up fast and strong. We knew they were coming and our anchorage was well protected from the Northeast. It was a little chaotic in the anchorage becasue all of the anchored boats all swung around on their anchors at the same time and we got a chance to see how well everyone did at guessing good anchor drop points. By dark it had cleared out pretty well with only 10-15 boats around us with plenty of space.
We are anchored a long way from town now and there is no Internet at the boat. We took the dinghy in this morning and it was about a 45 minute drive and still windy. My posts will be limited for a few days. We plan to stay until we get a weather break. It looks like there are more Northeast winds on the way. Our next target is the Southern part of Sardenga. We decided to hit the South end first to try to avoid more of the Mistral winds coming off the coast of France.  Our crossing to Sardenga will be at least three days. I'll try to post when I know we are taking off.

Friday night in Porto Colom!

We were on the boat last night trying to decide what to do for dinner. Soon we heard the sound of distant music coming across the water and we knew our destiny was sealed. We hopped into our trusty dinghy in search of the music source. We discover the source was a big party going on in a city square surrounded by eating establishments. There were a couple of blow-up rides for the kids and a music stage all ready to go.

We sat down at a Chinese restaurant table and ordered some food to wait for the show to begin. Gradually more and more dancers of various ages began to show up. It looked like we were in for quite a treat. As you can see in the video the Porto Colomians really know how to party! The place was packed with people and everyone brought the kids. 

There was a giant blow up play thing for the kids that had the head of Homer Simpson designed with a moving jaw so it could eat small children. It kind of make you wonder about what they think of American culture.

One gentleman, who I believe was the father of one of the dancers was walking near the edge of the dance floor when a lady (possibly his wife) chased him down with a paper bag and gave it to him. He checked out the bag and shook his head "no" and became visibly distraught. She shook her head "yes" and with a hang-dog look he walked off with the bag.

The gentleman reappreared soon in a Michael Jackson outfit. He took the floor to a great round of applause and the crowd really got into his MJ dance routine. He did not look much happier leaving the floor than he did when he opened the bag. Ah, the things we do for love....

Moving on to Menorca

We will be pulling up anchor today and head up to the next and last island in the Balarecs. The island is called Menorca and the port we are targeting is Mahón. The winds look great for the next couple of days coming out of the South to Southeast. This will be perfect for our track over to Menorca. It's 50-60 miles from where we are now to Mahón so we will leave late afternoon and sail through the night so we show up in daylight. If we leave here too early this morning we would end up having to enter the port in the dark.
There is some controversy about the spelling of Mahón. Some people spell it Mahón or Mô and our charts show it using various spellings. However you spell it the place looks fantastic on the charts. It is a long natural cala that is open to the Southeast. It has a great reputation as one of the best harbors in the world. When asked to name the three greatest harbors in the world, Lord Nelson of Great Britain responded "Mô, Maó and Mahón!"
This is a picture of the chart of Mahón. You can see how well protected it is.

Yes, I am a salty dog.

Yes, I'm fond of salt. From the sea, in the sea or into meal preparation, I like the salt. We were driving around Mallorca yesterday and I was navigating from the back seat. I'll post more pictures of our trip soon but basically this place is pretty dry. Much of the countryside ground is a very dry and rocky and it must be hard to grow anything. We saw a lot of dry riverbeds and the only bodies of water we saw were man-made reservoirs high in the mountains. Crops were growing only where some form of irrigation in place.

In the Southeast corner of the island there was a little blueish spot marked "wetlands". I doubted very much that they were the kind of wetlands that we know of in Florida. I navigated us to go check them out because I suspected something even better. Sure enough, where the map said there would be wetlands we began to see glimmers of sunlight reflecting off slivers of water. I kept my eyes peeled and soon enough I found my target. It looked like big piles of snow over by the wetlands. We pulled into the Salines d'Es Trenc salt plant. 

The wetlands were indeed wetlands, but it was a well managed flow of seawater. The seawater was gradually flowed from field to field and more and more of it evaporated. The gradual evaporation and movement of higher and higher concentrated water into different zones enabled workers to harvest the salt from the sea. In the plant they cleaned it and refined it for human consumption.

The plant had a nice little gift shop that sold very expensive salt samples and other salty-themed goods. Of course I got swept up into the whole salt-buying frenzy around us. I selected a fine little can of "gourmet" salt for 10 Euro and was milling around the check-out line when my good friend Charlie used some subtle verbal judo to slap me upside the head. His comment was something like "Gosh, they should at least put a tarp over the big piles of salt out back if they are going to charge that much for a handful."

After a moment of hesitation followed by clarity I set the can back on the shelf. I decided that whatever they were selling out in the vending machine would be just great. Not to mention that I have never bought anything in a salt vending machine before. Come to think of it, I've never seen a salt vending machine before. So I got a couple Euro from Charlie and ended up getting a free kilo of salt, fresh from the sea!

Landed in Mallorca, again

We arrived on the island of Mallorca at sunrise this morning. I sent a Spot out that we had anchored pretty early. We were in a little cala that I do not know the name of and were anchored for a little while. We hoped to just tie up at the fuel dock and find out if we could get a slip after we re-fueled. Unfortunatley the fuel dock had some boat tied up there so we had to anchor out. It was quite windy and bumpy in the anchorage area and our anchor would not hold. We could feel it slipping across the rock bottom. As we were examining our options with the slipping anchor, the boat that was blocking the fuel dock pulled out.
We slid right into the dock and got a little nap in waiting for them to open up. They were supposed to open at 10 AM local. It was kind of a weird little cala and seemed really industrial/mechanical. To me, it did not have a real good "vibe". That's just me I guess. But, as it happens we decided to pull out and go somewhere else. We left that dock at about 0630Z and started sailing around the North east side of Mallorca. With Charlies' input and experience, we selected a cala that was about 20 miles away as our target.
We started with a great wind direction and a good sail until we began to turn the corner. As we started to go more North up the east coast the wind was right on our nose again. We cranked up the engine and motored the rest of the trip.
The wind was strong from the North and there was a plethora of sailboats coming from the North going downwind. When I say plethora, I mean we thought there was a regatta going on or something because there were so many boats going South past us. We ended up anchoring in the bay of Porto Colom at about 1300Z and the wind is good, the sea is still and it's a nice little place. We have neighbors from France, Germany, Spain (of course) and three boats from the US.
It looks like Porto Colom has the facilities we need (mainly laundry) and everything else. I think we are going to try to rent a car to drive around and explore Mallorca tomorrow. I expect we will be here a couple of days at least. On the hook and safe again!

Leaving Cala San Vicente, Ibiza

It's 1300Z and we are pulling up the anchor in San Vicente. Our next port of call is not known for sure but it will be on the island of Mallorca. It will be 40-70 miles depending on where we hit land. We will sail through the night and arrive sometime in the morning tomorrow, Wednesday.
It looks like it's going to be a motor sail unless something changes dramatically with the wind situation. 

Our short visit to Tericeria, Azores

We only spent one night on the island of Tericeria. The port city is named Angra do Heroismo. The city has a much bigger feel than does Horta, Faial, the last city we visited. The downtown area has many shops featuring higher-end shopping and it is considerably larger than Horta. There is more traffic and generally feels bigger, busier and more modern. We did not make it out of the city and did not see the rest of the island. When you look at the picture of Herosimo, the light colored roofs are all the new ones that have been replaced since the last earthquake.

I ran across a boat that I had never seen before in the maria and had to post a picture for my boating friends. It was a inboard engine inflatable raft. You just don't see that every day.

We arrived on a Friday which happened to be the first day of a festival weekend. I never quite was able to catch the name of the festival or what it was all about. Many of the downtown streets were decorated with signs and lights. As we walked around during the day it seemed the city was preparing for something really big. There were sound stages set up at various locations and trucks with loudspeakers and bull paintings on the side driving around announcing something. I think the something was the location of the Truada da Corda - the bullfight on a cord event. 

The bullfight in the street was held in different locations though out the region each night during the season. I guess the truck with the loudspeaker and the bull paintings on the side was how the word was spread. We stopped by a tourist information place to see if we could firm up the actual location. They had a printed sheet with approximate locations for each night. 

We did a recon mission in the late afternoon to make sure we knew where we needed to go. I’m glad we did because it made us feel a lot better, however, we were completely wrong. It turned out to be one of those language barrier things again. 

Fortunately we met a nice couple in the marina from Great Britain. John and Laura were on the final leg back home to Great Britain on the Rainmaker. They had been traveling for about 2 years and seemed ready to return home. John had a solid lead on where to go for the bullfight and how to get there so we joined forces and headed out as a big team with John taking the role of Chief Navigator.

The walk to the location of the bull fight was all up hill. We passed through downtown and entered a botanical garden in the center of the city. It is a massive, winding garden with stairways and sidewalks going every which way. We kept heading up and up. We finally got to the exit and there was a tall skinny pyramid tower-like structure at the very peak. It was quite an impressive structure. The location of the bullfight street was not too far from here. 

We could see a flow of people walking in the general direction we were heading. It was basically a residential neighborhood that happened to be selected for the location of the bullfight. Everything looked normal as we approached until you looked closely. The knee-to-hip level walls separating the street from yards were all extended with add-on wood fences. Any of the metal fences that had the spiky tops were covered with wood forms, I’m guessing that is for someone needing to make a quick jump from the bull. 

We were hanging out at the first gathering of people we ran into which happened to be the very beginning of the bull run. Soon a flatbed truck with four large steel containers arrived and a truck-mounted crane began unloading the containers. We are not that perceptive as it turns out. Each container contained a bull. The bulls did not seem particularly happy to be there. 

We decided the best course of action would be to move upstream a little bit more. (After some helpful hints and pointing from our new friends from the bull farm) I got a good picture of a young bull fighter who was helping with the unloading process. 

As we walked uphill a bit more looking for a safe place to watch from we went past a fountain flowing from a sidewalk sculpture. It was a lion’s head with a flow out of its’ mouth into a little catch dish. We noticed There was quite a crowd around the fountain and people were filling their plastic cups from it. Somehow the lion was now spewing beer from its’ mouth and everyone was excited to help the beer not go to waste. The fountains producing beer may help to explain the jubilant atmosphere surrounding the bull-on-a-rope event.

Many vendors walked the streets hawking their wares. One of the popcorn and candy vendors had a particularly colorful display.

Not far past the beer fountain we ran across a big steel gate leading to a courtyard packed full of people. When we arrived there were television cameras filming interviews of a bunch of guys sitting at some tables up front. It turns out that the guys were like real bull fighters and what we would consider to be national heros. The crowd was all gathered in the private home courtyard of one of these people and they seemed happy to have a crowd around so we all joined in. Charlie happened to meet the son of the owners of the house and he invited us to stay so we felt quite welcome.

When the flares went off signifying the release of the bulls the steel gates closed and we ended up with great “seats” right behind the steel gates. We were very safe (I felt) behind the steel fence as the bulls passed by us. 

After the bull event we headed back into downtown. By this time the festivities were real starting to heat up. We ran across a crowd following a group of singers and guys playing some instruments. They had gathered at the steps of a church in a semi-circle. The gents with the guitars formed a ring behind the singers who took turns singing a slow ballad-type song solo with a very light background music. It was not a happy dance type of festival, it was more somber and slow. We all enjoyed the event and followed the crowd down the street to the next stop. They began the same routine and the same set all over again. We decided to get some food.

John and Laura joined us for dinner at a nice steak place in downtown. After dinner we wandered back towards the marina and through all of the street festivities. The streets were now lit and people were beginning to come out. The area around the marina was full of activity and vendors were selling food and drinks. The band was not scheduled to start for another hour or so and I decided to hang it up. From the boat, I heard the band crank up about an hour later and as it turns out, it was the same guys we had followed on the street. Only this time each solo was longer, like way longer. Each singer was given 20-30 minutes for their solo. Although I still did not understand the language, I could tell it was not a happy tale they were telling. 

I hope that this singing was the beginning of a long story that would be shared again over the course of the festival. I also hoped that eventually There would be a happy ending to the tale…