MALLORCA

Mallorca came into view at the end of overnight crossing number 7 through the early morning clouds.  It was 7.30am and time for me to take over from Tony on the helm while he put his head down for a bit more of a snooze.  The north/west end of the island was big and rocky and impressive to see and always a bit of a surprise after looking at maps and the chart plotter for the journey.  My mind always imagines the places we travel to, to be more one dimensional, so on arriving and seeing large rock headlands and cliffs is always a pleasant surprise. 

While Tony had his head down, I was keeping a lookout but not keeping my eyes constantly on the chart plotter or the view, so it was a surprise to see what I saw next.  Ahead of the boat and off to the right I saw what looked like a piece of wood floating in the water.  I changed course to avoid the obstacle which as I got closer looked like an upturned kayak only bigger.  When the upturned kayak blew water out of the top of it I knew I had just dodged hitting a whale and as an extra bonus a few minutes later I saw some dolphins. 

We based ourselves in the bay of Port de Pollenca for the first few days in Mallorca.  The bay was very protected and large but had a base of seagrass on sand which wasn’t ideal for anchoring  but it was very sheltered from the prevailing winds.  We went ashore the next morning and as usual was surprised by the town.  What looked like nothing from the boat was full of charm on the land.  The promenade was full of restaurants and bars and boutiques and Pommie tourists!  We were hearing English being spoken by most people we passed on the street which was a change.  

The second morning of our stay, I was getting back to the boat after a paddle board session on the extremely calm bay.  A slightly official boat came up to us and in Spanish with accompanying hand movements indicated that we should move our boat.  They went to the yacht close to us and tried to rouse the occupants by whistling and calling out and doing circles around the boat to create waves to wake them up.  They ended up not being on the boat.

The reason for all this was a seaplane parked on the shore was getting ready to launch from a land base close to where we had anchored.  The seaplane was also a water bomber, and we watched (after we had re-anchored) as they drove the plane down the ramp into the water and made its way through the boats and gathered speed and eventually took off.  It did lots of low passes over the bay and dropped water on some boats as it passed. 

The next day we decided to head to the next bay around as it was a huge bay with sand to anchor in from one end to another.  We anchored as close to the beach as allowable, and the next day we were visited by some kids on paddleboards.  There was a big row of hotels along the bay and lots of people on the beach.  These teenagers were getting closer to the boat, so we called out hello.  They spoke pretty good English and were on holiday from Romania, so we had a quick chat.  The kids were doing an activity with the boards, with a Spanish guy from their hotel.  The Spanish guy had paddled out to round up his charges and to make sure they weren’t annoying us.  There was also a guy with his two kids on a blowup lounge making their way towards us, so he came over for a chat.  He was an Austrian guy, who we discovered had been holidaying for the past 20 years in Mallorca. He and Tony found a lot to talk about.  

After the weather situation in the Balearic Islands earlier in August where a sudden storm hit the islands and caused some havoc with boats, we were being very careful with any strong wind forecasts. So, with that in mind we headed back to the bay of Pollenca to wait out a few days of wind.  We said life would slow down once we hit the Balearics and that is very much the case.