After 5 nights at the Club Nautico de Altea I departed for the Balearic Islands.  I planned to cruise the coasts of both Ibiza in the SW and the largest island of Mallorca, in the middle.  About this time I also decided to end my Mediterranean cruise in the Balearics and return to Portugal for the winter.  A combination of the limitations of single-handed sailing and a recurring back problem convinced me that continuing further into the Mediterranean would not be that much fun.  So the Balearics are as far as I now plan to go.  You can follow my progress on the chart on the left.  My journey is traced by the black line on the chart.  To view it better, double click on the chart and the full resolution chart image will be downloaded.

The chart contains links to various places I stopped on Ibiza and Mallorca.

I had planned to catch as much sleep as I could during the morning of June 29 in Altea, then move to the fuel dock at 4:00PM after the Siesta closure.  That would put me underway around 5:00 PM.  With about 70nm to cover I could expect to arrive off Ibiza around 6:00 AM, shortly before sunrise.

So much for plans.  I couldn't sleep during the morning and a pleasant sailing breeze was blowing through the marina.  I couldn't just sit there an let a good breeze dissipate when I had done virtually no sailing all season.  So I pulled out of the berth around noon and headed for the fuel dock.  As I approached the dock the attendant shouted, "No gasoleo".  Apparently a large motor yacht had put in that morning and drained the marina tank.  So now I had to hurry up the coast to Marina Greenwich (right on the prime meridian) to get there before the start of the Siesta if I was to re-fuel and get away with this breeze.

The breeze held all night.  Because I departed several hours earlier than planned, the breeze was actually a little too strong propelling Sarah at nearly six knots.  I had to slow Sarah down or I would be arriving off Ibiza around 2:00 AM with a lot of time to kill before dawn.

So I reefed the main.  That cut the speed to 5 kts or less.  Still too fast, but late that night the breeze did drop to less than 10 kts and my speed dropped to 4 kts.  For the last few hours I furled the Genoa completely and sailed under reefed main alone at about 3 kts.

In spite of all that reduced sail I still arrived off Ibiza about 5:00 AM.  By then the wind was calm so I turned on the engine and motored away from Ibiza for 1 hour, then turned around motored back.  By that time it was starting to get light and I headed for Cala Bassa, near the Puerto de San Antonio on Ibiza.

The anchorage is shown in the SOB screen capture on the left.

There is a large and very popular beach in the cove shown in the picture on the right.  However there are no hotels or other buildings in the cove, so it looked like an attractive and quiet place to rest after an all night sail.  Boy, was I wrong.

After I had slept less than 2 hours I was awaken by a loud amplified voice on a tour boat wending its way at significant speed through the anchorage.  This was a glass-bottomed boat taking tourist for an excursion around Ibiza.  I don't know what the attraction was for the tourists in this cala, but this boat was immediately followed by several more.

Then several boats pulled in and disgorged people headed for the beach.

Finally the water skiers arrived and started to use the anchored boats as a slalom course.

I'd had enough, pulled up the anchor and went searching for another cala in which to anchor and get more sleep.

I first looked into Cala Portixol, but it was too small to safely anchor this boat without putting out a second anchor or running a line ashore.  Then I ducked into Puerto de San Miguel and Cala Binirras.  The former was filed with moorings and the only anchoring space was in depths over 50'.  The later was attractive, but was well occupied by other boats.  I could have found space to anchor, but decided to press on.

I was headed for Cala Portinax, but on the way passed Cala Blanco.  I could see well into the cove and only one boat was anchored.  There were no hotels, just private homes and no beach.  I checked the guide and it reported ample anchoring space in less than 30' of water over sand.

So I headed into Cala Blanco and dropped the anchor as shown in the SOB screen capture on the right.

So I stayed in Cala Blanco while they worked on the alternator in San Antonio.  The problem turned out to be broken wire terminal and the alternator was fine.  So the next day (July 4) Whoosh arrived in Cala Blanco. 

As the only two U.S. boats in the cala we felt it was our duty to celebrate the 4th with a fireworks display of expired signal flares.  Unfortunately all of the expired flares we tried were duds, and the Spanish, British, Dutch and German boats in the anchorage were unaware that they had just missed a great show.

So we left Cala Blanco initially heading west back toward the Puerto de San Antonio and the southern end of the island.  We initially encountered a force 4 breeze on our nose with a short steep chop that significantly slowed our progress under engine power.  So we turned around and decided to head down the east side of the island and hopefully make better progress.

Unfortunately the winds on the other side of the island were also on the nose. 

The Cala de San Vicente has a fairly large tourist resort at the head of the cove, and the beach is buoyed off about 300 M off shore.  That forced us to anchor further out than we would have liked and we dropped our hooks in about 40' of water.