7th July - Mahon, Menorca

Soundtrack: the crackle of static from the HF radio as we try to get good enough reception to catch the latest Mednet weather forecast.

Low Point: Our first serious equipment failure since leaving Ayamonte. The windlass decides to pack it in just as the police have ordered us to leave our anchoring spot. As luck would have it, the anchor is almost up so Leighton doesn’t have to haul it in by hand. And here in Mahon we can take our pick of vacant mooring buoys while he works out what’s wrong with it.

High Point: It turns out that a pin has sheared so the gears can’t turn the drum. Leighton mutters “there is a dog!” as a box of screws in the workshop yields up a rolled pin which can be made to fit exactly. The windlass is soon back in action.

With a southeasterly forecast two days ago, we set out early from Cala N Porter before the wind picked up. We have to round Punta Binibeca on Menorca’s southeast corner to get to Mahon. It’s two hours of motoring before anchoring under the lee of Isla del Aire to have a bite to eat for lunch while we wait for the sea breeze. Interestingly we pick up a slight adverse current on the approach to the shallow passage between Binibeca and the island. We’re alarmed to see that the southerly cardinal there has rocks awash to the southwest of it!

Later the sea breeze fills the yankee to take us to the entrance to Mahon harbour, where we obediently reef to keep our speed below the 3 knot limit. Mahon harbour is one of the largest in the Med and we scout around for some time looking for somewhere where anchoring is allowed. Finally we join a large Danish ketch in Cala Figuera beyond the Sunseeker marina. But it’s not long before a policeman’s whistle brings us on deck and it’s clear from his indignant gestures that we have to push off and anchor somewhere else. That’s when we had our low point with the windlass.

We’re now in the main anchorage in Mahon which is some distance from the town – about 20 minutes in the dinghy with the outboard motor. It is sheltered on the landward side by Lazareta island which is still encircled by the fortified walls of an 18^th century isolation hospital. To the east and south we’re protected by the ramparts of La Mola fortress, which was built in the 1850s on the orders of Spain’s Queen Isabel to protect Mahon from attack by sea. We walked a good distance along its massive moat which was dug out of the bedrock and didn’t get right round it.

We’re anchored just below an old stone watchtower in the company of some twenty other yachts – mainly French and British. Some unsettled weather to the north makes us uncertain about when to embark on the 200 mile passage across to Sardinia, and we’re keeping a careful watch on the forecast. We want to be sure we don’t run into one of those Med storms that blow up quickly from the gulf of Genoa. We haven’t done any night sailing since our passage from Ayamonte to Rota in May, so it will be a bit of a shock to the system to spend two days and nights at sea.

We consider we’re travelling at a pretty leisurely pace having covered some 850 miles in two months. But compared with other liveaboards we’ve met that’s fast progress and they tell us we should learn to go a bit slower! A woman who lived onboard her boat said to me once that it took her six months to adjust to a state of being on the boat instead of doing. That’s when she started to really enjoy it. We certainly haven’t got to that frame of mind yet. The protestant work ethic is so engrained in both of us that we feel guilty about just sitting and doing nothing very much. That’s plain idle, isn’t it? All the same, we reckon it doesn’t do us any harm to have a bit of a breather for a day or two to catch up on all the jobs and to prepare the boat for the passage to Sardinia.