Down-time in the South of Mallorca

After a safe arrival in Cala Figuera on anchor in Mallorca, we had a plan that included a nice meal on the boat, followed by a restful night and a chill out morning the next day. What we got however was an evening meal that required the pasta to be cooked for 5 mins in a pan on the cooker and then 5 mins more to microwave it after finding that we had run out of gas, in not just the one, but two gas bottles. That is what happens when you fail to swap out empty ones from the year before ! However the meal was still decent.

Thursday morning was taken up by checking out and giving a test run to the new dinghy and outboard, we went round to Cala Portals which consisted of quite a few naked bodies with wobbly and dangly bits for all to see. So apart from trimming a little too high, the dinghy performed well, the same cannot be said for the pilots, but they always say practice makes perfect. After reading the manual we have also hopefully fixed the trimming issue.

The idea was to then chill out for a few hours on the boat be  fore moving on to Portals marina for the evening, but after 30 mins of grabbing some rays, a party catamaran boat from Magalluf turned up, about 200 metres from our boat, including about 100 British youngsters, a DJ and clearly enough alcohol to sink it as well , the music was fine, but listening to the DJ was painful, clearly it was a requirement to use the ‘F’ word in every sentence, (hear for yourselves!… Rowdy bunch from Magaluff) ,  but as they also say, there is no peace for the wicked, so we took off early for Portals.

Portals is very up-market, but we behaved, from a retail therapy perspective, very well, had dinner at a restaurant called Tristans (for Danie, Nova & Andrea.. not nearly as posh as it used to be 15 years ago, either that, or all the other new restaurants have raised their game and overtaken it in terms of price!.. you wouldn’t recognise the place!) and hit the sack about midnight. Chantal had a slightly interrupted sleep, explained, when I asked if she slept well, by her saying “yes apart from the fish were eating our boat!” Convinced she had had a nightmare about Jaws consuming our boat, as any normal person would, I was a little surprised when she mentioned it again, this time fully awake. It turned out to be was that she could hear fish eating the plant life on the bottom of our boat, personally I preferred my version of events.

We had a English breakfast at Wellies in Portals, before setting off for Palma on Friday afternoon, given it was only about 4 miles and little or no wind, we did no sailing. Arrived in Palma, managed to acquire two (full) gas bottles and also managed to fix our outside deck lamp that had stopped working the night before, that was after an electrician said he couldn’t fix it and left it in bits, mind you, I didn’t know we had it in us to fix it either.

Friday night, managed to walk for hours (slight exaggeration!) without getting to where we wanted,  even though Chantal had been to the centre of Palma a few times a few (12!) years ago, it transpired that it was always by taxi, and she had clearly never paid attention to where it was going !  Had a nice Italian meal in the old town and watched Spain get taken apart by Holland in the world cup, so lots of very sad faces afterwards, but not our Italian waiter or us, although tonight may change that. Come on England.

Spent Saturday morning sightseeing, very beautiful place and well worth a visit. No doubt Chantal will upload some her favorite pics to her Flickr account when on decent WIFI, but for now here’s a few..

Palma, Capital of Mallorca

A pleasant sighting in the afternoon comprised of an eagle, with its owner, flying around the boat in the marine,, not the owner obviously!

Tonight is a late dinner, a photo opportunity adorned with tripod

and an even later football match to watch !!

Tomorrow we leave for Cala Calagol on the SE tip of Mallorca, ready to set sail to Sardinia, on the south east corner of Mallorca where we will stay overnight before setting off to Sardinia, which we should reach by about Wednesday lunchtime, a little weary no doubt.