Sat 23 Jun

Wow, what a day. I woke up at 3am, waiting for the alarm to go off which was set for 5:30. Yes, you read that right – 5:30! We had a 50 miles passage to Mallorca ahead of us, and figured it would take us roughly 10 hours, so getting up early meant we would arrive in the afternoon and most importantly, before dark. We got the boat ready, folded Bob the dinghy away, and made our way out of the deserted anchorage. The wind was fantastic, we had 10 knots right on the beam, which is pretty much the best wind you can get – fast and super comfortable. I love being out on the water in these early morning hours, it is so quiet, there are no boats around, and we watched the sun come up as we made our way towards Mallorca.

At some point the wind dropped a bit, and we thought it would be time to hoist our Gennaker. The gennaker is a big sail that is flown in light winds, one of those that looks like a big balloon flying in front of the boat. We haven’t used our gennaker in a while, and made a few mistakes while trying to set it up. However after a bit of wrestling with a few lines the gennaker was up and we were flying towards Mallorca. It is hard to describe, but there is something quite satisfying having this huge sail fly in front of the boat and making 7 knots (very fast for our boat) in light airs.

We felt very accomplished and were quite proud of ourselves when out of nowhere all hell broke lose. We hit a huge wind gust, which knocked the boat on its side and send stuff flying down below. Camilla was on the helm, and we found ourselves wrestling with the boat in what was a strong 20 knots of wind, way too much wind for our gennaker. We managed to regain control of the boat and decided to take the gennaker down. This should be fairly easy, as the sail has a long sock that you just pull over it before taking the sail down. Well I managed to pull about half of the sock over the sail hitch was flocking in the wind like crazy, getting smacked in the face by wildly flocking ropes everywhere, while Camilla was wrestling the boat at the helm. I remember at some point using my whole body weight to pull down the sail, and the sail not budging one single bit. It was quit scary. After a few minutes of wrestling the sail and the boat we somehow managed to get the sail down and shoved it below deck to sort it out later.

The wind was still strong but manageable, and we made good time towards Mallorca with hands still shaking from all the unexpected sail action. As we approached our anchorage in Mallorca (we planned to stay in Cala Murta) we had another problem with our genoa foresail, which for some reason did not want to furl away. Somehow the sailing gods had conspired against us today, and it took quite a bit of fiddling to convince the sail to furl away, all in a very bumpy sea. At this point we were both ready to drop the hook and get some rest, but not just yet. The anchorage turned out to be way too small for us, and we decided to check out Porto Cristo instead. It looked nice on the chart and in the pilot book, but coming into the port and seeing nothing but massive tourist boats and a handful of boats bouncing in their wash we decided to head out and find another spot. That turned out to be an excellent decision, as we found this place called Cala Estany d’en Mas (aka. Cala Romantica), a lovely little bay with only us anchored in it.

We took the dinghy ashore to see if we could watch the soccer game – Germany playing Sweden in the World Cup – and to our surprise, we were welcomed by a lovely beach bar with a big TV and A LOT of Germans. For some reason this bay seems to be fully occupied by Germans, and we spent the rest of the evening watching the game and eating Bratwurst. Prost!