The Jump to the Balearic Islands

I had left Armando on Severance in the beautiful Sardinian town of Arbatax.

Originally, the plan had been to get to Caglaria, but we fell 100 nm short.

How Armando survived in that town for 3 weeks without going totally insane it beyond me, but he was thrilled when I arrived (not really to see me, but it meant we could get the hell out of there!).

I was totally exhausted and looked forward to sleeping for 2 days, based on my experience the chances were good we'd be trapped by weather for at least that long.

In my absence, Armando had tackled a long list of problems and issues we had on the boat.

The biggest was that he repaired our underdeck, hydraulic autopilot, which had not worked since Plymouth.

There was no way we were going to make the next big leg without it, we hadn't needed it in the canals, but had done some long cold passages being forced to steer across the English channel and during our Med travels.

This was huge.

He also cleaned up a lot of wiring, getting us past some “emergency” stuff Eric and I had done after leaving the Azores.

Plus, the boat was all cleaned up, organized, tidy, just the way the house had been when I arrived!

I knew it wouldn't last and started to get a sense that there was a common thread in the disarray that seems to surround me, but I quickly dismissed that notion and proceeded to tear open and strew around all the packages I had proudly brought back with me as Armando rolled his eyes back in some kind of expression of resignation.

Armando informed me that he had good and bad news, which did I want to hear first?

I was never good at that game, but the deal was that we had a short window that we could use to sail to the Belearic islands but that we needed to leave at 4:00 am the next morning!

And, the “good” weather window meant we shouldn't experience more that 30 knot gusts, which counts as great weather around these parts!

So, before the crack of dawn, off we went.

However, when I say we I have to admit that I never heard the engine start, which is only 1' from my head and I didn't awake until 2:00 pm, at which point I took a look around and went down for a 6 hour nap.

It turned out to be a great trip, Armando and usual had figured out the weather correctly.

We screamed along on a broad reach in 20-30 knot winds, the seas built a bit given the length of time the wind was in the same direction (waves typically aren't a big problem in the Med, compared to the Atlantic or English channel).

From Arbatax the trip was about 300 nm and we arrived in Puerto de Mahon, Menorca mid-day after 2 nights out on the water.

This really felt like a big turning point as we had passed the waters affected by the Mistral (the Belearics are on the West edge of it) and could now run behind islands to a jump off point of only 60 nm from Spain.

And damn if it wasn't sunny and almost warm, much nicer than anything we'd experienced in months.

After 2 days in Mahon we left for Mallorca, anchored overnight in a cala and motorsailed in calm waters and sunshine around the coast to Palma.

For the 1^st time we're starting to come across pleasure boats out on the water, feels like we might be onto something here!