Friday 24 May 2019

I spent a rather frustrating few hours, during the morning, trying to make an application for a permit to visit Cabrera, an island to the south of Mallorca and a national park. We had to get a navigation permit to enter the waters around the islands and a mooring permit. The website had a fault, stopping the application from proceeding. I phoned the helpline, to be told that there couldn’t be a fault because they had checked it that morning. I assured them that, not just me, but the lady in the marina office, who had helped me with making the application, were sure that there was a fault on the website. They could not make a reservation over the phone, but gave me another number to call. On two further phone numbers, I talked to a very helpful guy, who offered to get us the navigation permit, with us emailing him the boat details. We just then had to call him, when we had confirmation, so we could pay for the mooring permit. I asked his name and had trouble understanding his reply, because of his accent, so he then said, Daniel, Daniel Craig. So I thanked 007 profusely for his help. We then also sent an email again to thank him, addressed to Daniel aka James Bond.

At last we could leave and we then had a sail in the rain, down to Cabrera. As we approached the island we were watching a vessel on AIS, ahead, on our track, which was intermittently stopping, then moving quite fast. We knew from AIS that it was 10 metres long and 2 metres wide, but we couldn’t see it. Getting closer, looking with the binoculars, we realised that it was the rowers, out on a training row. This was now 6.00pm, so we guessed they must be doing a night row, back to Palma, but we’ll never know. We didn’t carry on tracking them.

Our friends the rowers

The book tells us that Cabrera and Conejera were probably inhabited in prehistoric times; traces of ancient buildings have been found, along with Roman and Byzantine ceramics and coins. The castle overlooking Puerto de Cabrera is thought to have been built in the 14th century as a defence against pirates. There are several species of fauna, flora and lizards, unique to the archipelago, which is also a haven for rare Audouins gulls, ospreys and Peregrine and Eleonora’s falcons.

The bay has a 2 knot speed limit. It’s very difficult to keep Equinox at 2 knots on minimum engine and we noticed other boats did not observe the speed limit. As we arrived at our chosen mooring buoy, the park ranger came to greet us and check we had our permit. He looked concerned but we assured him that we email confirmation of the permit. After he had studied this, his face brightened: I see the mistake, he said. You boat is down as being named “Stephen Morris”. We’ve had a good chuckle about that.

We didn’t see the bay at its best in the drizzly rain.

Distance covered today	29	nautical miles
Trip distance covered	592	nautical miles
Distance covered 2019	592	nautical miles
Tricia (and Steve)