La Bonanova

This morning I discovered the reason why the outboard wouldn’t start last night. I stuck my hand in my pocket and found the kill cord for the engine.
We forgot all about it last night and of course the engine won’t start without it being attached. Dumb or what?

By 10.00 we were all up, had our breakfast and were preparing the boat to depart.
We raised the anchor at 10.30, motored out of the cala and half an hour later hoisted the main and began motorsailing downwind to Cap Blanco. Shortly after we entered Palma Bay we unfurled the genny, turned off the engine and sailed towards Palma on a broad reach.

At times we goose winged with the sails on opposite sides but eventually for safety sake we just ‘tacked’ downwind keeping the sails to one side or the other.

Máirín and Chris took turns on the helm. With the winds being light the sailing was slow but we were not in a hurry and it was less than twenty miles to our destination anyway. We were in holiday mode rather than passage mode.

We arrived at Palma harbour and having dropped the sails we motored in and called up the various public marinas on the VHF but got no answer.
Chris who had become our communications expert used the phone and finally discovered that there was a regatta starting that weekend and every berth was booked.

Disappointed, we got out the pilot book and looked along the coast to see where the next harbour was.
A few miles to the west was Cala Nova, on the western suburbs of Palma city.
There was a national sailing school there so we didn’t know for certain if they were public berths available.

Chris got on the phone and within a short time had arranged a berth for two nights. However they were all apologies…..it was not a Mediterranean berth but instead alongside one at their waiting berth.
Yipee!! No problem for us, this is what we do every day at home.

In no time at all we had entered this lovely new marina, tied up and the crew were preparing lunch while I went to the office with the paperwork.
It wasn’t cheap but then Palma is the sailing capital of Spain and even the King has his yacht there.

Mairín was still sick and now had a bad cough. She had picked up a bug in Mahon and unfortunally she had not been well since then with the lumpy sea while sailing to Majorca doing nothing to help.
She went off to visit a pharmacy and if possible a doctor for the cough.

The rest of us had a light lunch and an obligatory bottle of wine.
Chris who isn’t sleeping very well due to the heat went down below to catch up on the zzzz’s, joined by Máirín when she came back.

That evening Máirín decided to stay on the boat and recover while the rest of us found a nice Italian restaurant not too far away and had another experience of the huge glasses that the Spanish serve G&T’s in.
The dinner was lovely and so was the wine we had with it.

We were feeling a bit guilty leaving Mairín on her own back on the boat so we arranged with the restaurant to give us a takeaway to bring back to her when we finished our own dinner. Whatever about not feeling well, we found there was nothing wrong with Mairín appetite! She scoffed it down as if she hadn’t eaten since Menorca.

Leg 4 - 22 mls. Total 513 mls.Read more