Tuesday 14 May 2019

We spent a gloriously peaceful night on the anchor, in recent days the wind has died away overnight to almost nothing and we came on deck for breakfast to a very tranquil scene.

We are still discovering things about the boat and also configuring some aspects for the first time.  The ones we have not looked at so far are usually things that are not so important to us.  However, they seem more vital to others, and Henry was disappointed that we could not play our music through the cockpit speakers as we went along. So before leaving, we spent half an hour sorting this out once and for all.

Our objective was to be close to Palma for the night as Henry is flying home tomorrow (Wednesday). We had a wonderful sail around the headland and into the massive bay outside Palma. Smooth water and a nice clean wind of about 10 knots and we were moving along very nicely.  En route we saw Pink Gin (55 metres), one of the super yachts, that seem to be based in Palma, doing some race practice. They were running through a series of manoeuvres, with a chase boat close by, presumably giving feedback on what was happening. Fortunately, both were on AIS, so we could also monitor their speed, direction, rate of turn etc. and keep well out of the way.

The plan was to be close enough that we could go into the harbour at Palma on Wednesday morning, without berthing overnight, we just needed to be alongside for long enough for Henry to get off. We headed to our first-choice site, but concluded that is wasn’t going to be right, so went back a mile or so and anchored in the lee of Las Illetas, which is about half way between Palma and Magaluf.  We had a go at setting the anchor, but it did not bite first time, at which point a guy on a Dutch registered boat said he was about to leave, and we could take his spot, and drop the anchor over a nice patch of sand.  We were very pleased to accept his offer, and once in position, set the anchor with no problem.

We started to research the public transport for Henry to get to the airport from Palma, and come across the excellent website for the city’s bus service. A little more digging and we discovered that Henry could get a bus from where we were to Palma, and then another to the airport.  All we had to do was to get him ashore there. As it was going to mean a prompt start in the morning, albeit later than we would have to have been to take the boat to Palma, a recognisance trip in the tender seemed like a good idea.  We got this out, and I was able to delegate the pumping duties to our youngest crew.  We looked at 3 or 4 potential sites for landing, missing the best and most obvious, and discussed how the various hotels with private beaches would react to our short-lived use of their land.

On returning to Equinox, we saw that another yacht had anchored nearby and Tricia was highly irritated be a powerboat that had come to visit them, and had gone through the anchorage are at reasonably high speed, and then performed a sharp turn.  This was enough to send a huge wave of wash through the anchorage. As the closest boat, we had experienced this the worst.  Things calmed down for a bit, and then the folks on this boat decided that they would take some members of the party on a rubber ring, being towed behind the speedboat.  There were half a dozen people on the powerboat, all intently taking videos of the folks on the ring, as they performed twists and turns to accelerate the tow. They continued to do this close to the anchored boats, completely oblivious to the wash that they were creating.  Eventually a good deal of fist waving and some choice language being shouted at them got their attention, and they moved away to continue playing. The bay is enormous, why did they think they need to be so close to other boats. Idiots!

Distance covered today	19	nautical miles
Trip distance covered	456	nautical miles
Distance covered 2019	456	nautical miles
Steve (and Tricia)