Wednesday 29 May 2019

I am delighted that we have made it to Soller. We have visited the town before by train from Palma, and thought that it was very pretty then. Now entering from the sea and viewing the port area from the sea just reinforces our previous view.

We had a fairly unpleasant first night here.  The bay gives you shelter from all directions except north west, and inevitably this was the direction that the swell was coming from.  Swell is not usually a problem because it is created by the wind, and the boat normally lies with the bows into the wind.  Last night however, the wind dropped to nothing and the residual swell kept coming.  It was fine while the boat pointed into it, but during the night the boat swung round to be side on, and then rocked and rolled uncomfortably.  We were awoken by various noises, including a bottle of Seven Up rolling back and forth and a cup falling of a shelf in a cupboard.  Laurence also had the bucket of flares sliding around within a cupboard in his cabin, until he took them out and put them on the other berth. I was woken by all this at about 1:30, and having been out on deck to check that all was well, did not get back to sleep until about 4:30. I was woken again at about 6:00 and then again at about 8:00.  The random direction that the boat was lying was also enough to trigger the anchor drag alarm, so this needed to be checked and reset. The joys of sailing!

When I came to again, the morning was beautiful, the weather is steadily getting hotter.  The swell had died down somewhat and all was better.

We prepared the tender, and went across to the quay, where we left it in a parking area set aside for this purpose.  After a couple of days afloat, it felt good to have feet on dry land.  We walked a couple of miles along the road, following the train tracks, to the town proper of Soller.  Here there were various shops that we needed for provisions. Laurence went off on his own for a while to explore.  The town of Soller seems to be a traditional layout, although there are tourist cafes etc in the very centre.  Our walk took us through groves of orange and lemon trees and it seems as if some aspects of life have changed little here over the years.

We made several more trips back and forth in the tender, and its engine seems to be working better after the carburettor clean of a few weeks ago and regular usage.  Hopefully the detergents that they put in fuel these days are doing their trick.

Distance covered today	0	nautical miles
Trip distance covered	703	nautical miles
Distance covered 2019	703	nautical miles
Steve (and Tricia)