Wed 11 Jul and Thu 12 Jul

The day before a big passage (big is relative here – big for us at least) is always a bit funky. We can’t really relax, nor can we start any bigger projects. It’s a bit what a friend calls “taxi time” – the dead time between calling a taxi and it arriving.

We usually try to get some exercise in in the day before departure, and we had some errands to run in the city, so we thought – why not combine the two? Equipped with two empty gas bottles in a grandma-style shopping trolly and a load of bags we set out on what would be a day of walking 17 kilometres through the heat of Barcelona. Sweaty and exhausted, but with freshly filled gas bottles and a load of provisions we got back to the boat in the afternoon. This is when I realised we still had not quite finished the chart plotter work, the boat was still a mess with tools everywhere, and we had done no food preparation either. What followed was frantic finishing of boat projects, cleaning, stowing, cooking, packing, repacking … all the way to 1 am. Not exactly the calmest way of preparing for a passage, but it was what it was. On our way back from having one last shower we said good bye to our good friend Bartek and went to bed.

The next morning started as frantic as last night had finished, as we realised we still had to put Bob – the dinghy – onto the deck and give the boat a quick clean before we left. We cast off lines around 11am, got some diesel and made our way out of the marina.

Excited about the adventures ahead we were looking forward to a nice sail over to Menorca. The forecast looked like there would be a nice wind, but generally from the wrong direction. We thought we’d practice our upwind sailing skills a bit, and were expecting to make good way towards Menorca. Well, what can I say, reality turned out to be quite different. The wind and the waves came exactly from where we had to go, and Bini was pounding into the waves. We tried everything, sails up, sails down, engine on, engine off … nothing seemed to work. It’s quite depressing when you are pounding through the waves for hours, and then you turn around and see the detailed coastline of Barcelona with buildings and people on the beach. We pondered whether we should turn around and try another day, or maybe adjust our course to something a bit more wind friendly and go to Mallorca instead. All of these options seemed like giving up, so we decided to “man up” and keep pushing towards Menorca. As the day and the night progressed we encountered slight changes in the wind direction, allowing us to sail a few hours here and there, but mostly we were just pounding into the waves for 30 hours. Not exactly a pleasant experience, but character building for sure 🙂 Now we know the true meaning of the saying “A gentlemen never sails to windward”.

As we made it to the beautiful bay of Puerto Fornells the plan was to anchor for the night and see what the next day brings. Anchor ready, nice spot in a protected anchorage I pressed the windlass button full of enthusiasm, just to hear a strange clicking followed by Camilla asking “Why is there no electricity?”. Turns out our windlass did not like the 30 ours of pounding through the waves, and trying to make it do anything was immediately rewarded with breakers firing all over the boat. Oh well, we went to pick up a mooring ball instead. There was much confusion on the radio about who to call on which channel, as there is a club nautico, the marina itself and some other party all seemingly responding on channel 8 and 9. Eventually we managed to pick up a morning and spent a quiet evening in the cockpit, reflecting on the rough passage over here and feeling quite proud that we had made it.