Monday 10 June 2019

Although it is still a couple of weeks away, we have started to make our preparations for when our next guest crew arrive, and we take the next step to Sardinia.  We have to get to boat to the right place to meet them and have the appropriate provisions on board. The first of these tasks is complicated by both the weather and the timing of the feast of St Joan.  There are various festivities and regattas planned around the island, and this means that marina space is very hard to come by. We have been in contact with each of the marinas in Mahon, and various other places. All say that they are fully booked. We have been looking at the weather forecasts and see that some sort of a blow is expected later this week. We have similarly tried to arrange a place to be in port for this time, without success. We will keep trying, watching the weather forecasts and plan to take the best alternative available.

We are also starting to run (relatively) short of food, so the plan today was to move a couple of miles to a nearby cala, anchor there and go ashore to whatever shops there were and see what we could buy.

Not much of a picture, my attempt at photographing fish under the water.

There was more wind blowing than we were going to be comfortable with leaving the boat un-attended at a new anchorage, so we modified the plan and decided to leave the boat where is was, and had been secure for several days, and go ashore in the dinghy. We would then walk through the forest to the town / village, thus getting some much-needed exercise as well.  However, and there had to be a “but”, the wind continued to increase and we were unwilling to leave the boat unattended for the 3+ hours that we would have been away, out of sight of anything that might be happening. So we decided to wait a while and see if the wind died down as the weather forecast had predicted. It didn’t, we ended up staying in the same place for a fourth night, a record at anchor for us, with no fresh supplies of food, down to just ships biscuits and everything that inhabits them (well not quite).

It was about the laziest day we have ever had on the boat. Not worth starting any of the jobs that we need to do, in case it became time to rush off.  The anchorage emptied of other boats and the weather kept the tourist boats to a minimum.

A few new arrivals came, including a French boat crewed by a couple with 2 smallish dogs. Cats yesterday, dogs today.  The boat was equipped with a tender and a SUP (Stand Up Paddle) board. We saw the lady from the boat take the 2 dogs onto the paddle board and go ashore with them a couple of times.  We were intrigued why the tender was not taken, as it was equipped with an outboard motor, and would probably have been easier.  I imagined the dialogue between the couple, with the woman pro dog and the bloke less so.  “if you want to have those dogs on board, they will have to be taken to land regularly, and I am not going to do it, and you are not using my dinghy!” Anyway, the dogs seemed quite at home on the SUP board.

Distance covered today	0	nautical miles
Trip distance covered	830	nautical miles
Distance covered 2019	830	nautical miles
Steve (and Tricia)