New anchorage - Cala San Vicente

We left San Antonio this morning early and sailed North around Ibiza. We have now anchored safely in Cala San Vicente. It is on the Northeast corner of Ibiza. We plan to only spend one night here and will depart tomorrow, Tuesday for the next island up to the Northeast, Mallorca. It's 40-50 miles from here to the nearest anchorage so it will probably be an overnight sail.
The sail today was strictly a motor-sail. We did not expect good winds based on the forcast. We needed to make some electricity and water anyway so running the engine for a few hours was not so bad. It was one of those wind days when no matter which way you turned, the wind came from the bow.

A cala is kind of like a little cove. At the end of the cala there is usually a beach, some hotels, restuarants and bars. The island of Ibiza has sheer rock cliffs falling straight down to the surrounding water. In most places it is still hundreds of feet deep right up to the rock wall. The calas are little breaks in the rock walls and they are where the people settle. You can find protection from the winds and waves in the little coves.

We did some tight tacking this morning following the Western coast around. We were sailing right towards the sheer rock walls and then tacking back out again. It was a beautiful sail even though the motor was running. These pictures are of the coast coming into cala San Vicente. Notice the old guard tower on the point in one of the pictures. The picture shot through the rigging is looking down the cala into the anchorage. And that's where we are parked right now!

Big fast ferry

There are ferries shuttling people all around the Med. When you are in a group of islands such as the Balarecs or in close areas like the Straits of Gibraltar the ferry traffic is quite frequent. The ferries range in size, speed and capacity. Some of them are small passenger-only ferries, others are made to handle cars and trucks. Some are slow and leasurely and others are fast hydrofoils. As we were sailing from Formentera to Ibiza a fast ferry passed up by. Our AIS told us it passed at about 30 knots. It was kicking up a huge wake and I had to run down and close some hatches before we hit it. It was a very impressive ship.

Upcoming plans

We are in the city of San Antonio on the island of Ibiza right now. We plan to depart here Monday morning and stop for the night in a cala on the Northern coast of Ibiza. Tuesday morning we plan to cross over to the next island in the Balerecs. It is called Mallorca, we don't know what port we will land in. It all depends on the wind. It's at least a hundred miles and will be another overnight sail.
We never have found good wifi here from the boat. I'm having lunch now and got some wifi at the resturant. I just wanted to let everyone know what our upcoming plans are before I lose the connection.

Radio monkey business

All ocean-going vessels are required to monitor a selection of radio channels while under way. There are two major categories of radios used on ships. High frequency (HF) SSB radios are for long distance communications and for shorter range communications VHF or Very High Frequency radios are used. Channel 16 on VHF is used in the US as a priority calling channel and its’ use it strictly monitored. It is only to be used to make a contact and then move the conversation to another frequency. The coast guard monitors Channel 16 and will kindly ask any inappropriate use to move to another channel.

My experience so far in the Med with VHF radio has been quite different. We have tried a number of times unsucessfully to call ships on VHF channel 16 that we were on a close course with. We were calling the ship by name and call sign (received from AIS) and still received no response. We did not even receive a response in another language.  Small boats like Koinonia rely on the radio to make sure the big ships are aware of us.

We try to monitor Channel 16 as well to hear of any alerts of things we need to know about. Now I understand why some ships may not be answering us. Channel 16 in the Med seems to be quite abused. There are constant discussions in a variety of languages. Others try in their own language to get them to shut up. To consider having to really listen to it full time I can understand why ships were not answering our calls. I’m sure most captains just shut it off.

We have scanned all of the frequencies hoping to find a better "official use" channel. Sometimes Channel 13 is used for bridge to bridge communications and we thought it might be used here. Many of the channels where we heard activity it was the same. Just chatter.

I recorded a few short minutes of some guys having fun on channel 16. Soon after I recorded this segment some other guys came on and made fun of the monkey talkers in some other language. Oh boy. I’ve never once heard any official monitoring station make any behavior corrections. 

Radio monkey business

[[posterous-content:pid___0]]All ocean-going vessels are required to monitor a selection of radio channels while under way. There are two major categories of radios used on ships. High frequency (HF) SSB radios are for long distance communications and for shorter range communications VHF or Very High Frequency radios are used. Channel 16 on VHF is used in the US as a priority calling channel and its’ use it strictly monitored. It is only to be used to make a contact and then move the conversation to another frequency. The coast guard monitors Channel 16 and will kindly ask any inappropriate use to move to another channel.

My experience so far in the Med with VHF radio has been quite different. We have tried a number of times unsucessfully to call ships on VHF channel 16 that we were on a close course with. We were calling the ship by name and call sign (received from AIS) and still received no response. We did not even receive a response in another language.  Small boats like Koinonia rely on the radio to make sure the big ships are aware of us.

We try to monitor Channel 16 as well to hear of any alerts of things we need to know about. Now I understand why some ships may not be answering us. Channel 16 in the Med seems to be quite abused. There are constant discussions in a variety of languages. Others try in their own language to get them to shut up. To consider having to really listen to it full time I can understand why ships were not answering our calls. I’m sure most captains just shut it off.

We have scanned all of the frequencies hoping to find a better "official use" channel. Sometimes Channel 13 is used for bridge to bridge communications and we thought it might be used here. Many of the channels where we heard activity it was the same. Just chatter.

I recorded a few short minutes of some guys having fun on channel 16. Soon after I recorded this segment some other guys came on and made fun of the monkey talkers in some other language. Oh boy. I’ve never once heard any official monitoring station make any behavior corrections. 

 

Made it to Formentera

We have just dropped the anchor in a little bay off of the island of Formentera. I guess if you want to get techical, we are in a bay on the Northwest side of the island of Espalmador which is a sliver of land connected at low tide to the island of Formentera in the Baleares Islas.
I've been going through my normal anchorage routine of checking, confirming and creating our communications channels. So far I have found no usable wifi. We have very limited cell service. So, to translate that for those of you that have no idea what I am talking about it means - no Skype while we are here. Maybe SMS texting and possible ham communications.
(This was not posted in a timely fashion, I could not make the radio connection)

Crossing the Prime Meridian

We have been traveling East for months now. Today we crossed over from West longitude to East longitude. It's also called the Prime or Greenwich Meridian or just Zero degrees.
Our position when we crossed was:
N37 48.7
E000 00.0
The sail so far from Ceuta has been mixed. As we departed port we had 25 knot winds from the West that gave us a good jump start down the Med. We were seeing 9+ VMG for quite a while the first day. The first night the wind died completely and did not come back in the morning. We motored all day on Tuesday July 5th. Today is Wednesday and the wind has been fantastic all day. It's been downwind and fair seas. We are running almost on our track and making 5-6 VMG. We anticipate arriving at Formentera early Thursday morning. We have a nice anchorage picked out there and we will stay until we get bored or run out of peanut butter. I seriously doubt if we will have Internet. Ceuta is on the African continent so our path on this leg has been mostly Northeast. If you recall some of my earlier posts showing all of the boat traffic in the Straits of Gibraltar you know we had to cross those traffic lanes again. We made it though just fine but we had to do a little dodging. We had a lot of trouble getting ships to answer us when we called them. It kind of reminded me of the old video game "Frogger" and we were the Frog...
(Happy Birthday Mom!)