On passage to Mallorca

We had arranged to leave at 10.00 for Majorca where we hoped to reach in the early morning of tomorrow.
All the crew were ready to depart as arranged except for . . . . . . . . . . . . . Máirín, who appeared at the bottom of the companion way with a bowl of cereal in her hand asking to know if she was needed, just as we were about to cast off
She got some slagging once we were able to stop laughing. The rest of us had to wait till later for our breakfast.

We motored out and put up the main.
We had problems hoisting the sail until Máirín redeemed herself by appearing with a can of silicone spray in her hand to lubricate the slides on the sail.

Once outside the wind was a little fresher than we had been led to believe by the forecasts. We headed south on a close reach in 12 knots of wind down the east coast to the SE point of Menorca, the island of Isla de Aire.
There we wanted to change course to the SW towards Majorca but due to the wind direction we could only make a westerly course towards the NE corner of the island instead of the SE corner where we wanted to go.

As the hours went on we made a few tacks to try to keep south of our course and we were making a bit of ground until the late afternoon when the wind increased to 16-18 knots and with it came a confused choppy sea.
Máirín became sick and Chris didn't want to go down below. I couldn't blame them.

About 19.00 I decided to turn on the engine and furl the genny to make things easier before we had diner and also to be able to head in the direction we wanted to go. Unfortunally the main began to flog soon after so that had to come down too.

We had dinner about 20.30 but due to the conditions Máirín and Laura did not partake and we began the watches after dinner by which time we were about twenty five miles east of the coast of Mallorca.

With the lumpy sea we were only making 3.5 knots on a course towards Cap de Ses Salinas, the southern tip of Mallorca but as the night wore on, the winds dropped and we were able to gradually increase speed until by midnight we were up to our cruising speed of 6.3 knots.

We were hoping to arrive at our destination of Cala Pi on the south coast just east of Palma bay shortly after dawn.Read more