From Barcelona to Tramuntana

May 2017
I forgot how mesmerizing night sailing can be in the right conditions.  We set off from Barcelona in mid afternoon under amazing weather and wind conditions.  We had a most magical, peaceful sail through the night, with the moon lighting our way and big blobs of fluorescence (perhaps jellyfish?) trailing behind the boat.  We rounded the formidable Cap de Formentor in NW Mallorca in the morning and anchored in a secluded anchorage, shedding the sleepiness of the night as well as our cold weather clothes.  The weather has been improving with every mile we sailed since France and it finally feels like the Mediterranean summer. The water is still fairly cold for swimming but its turquoise hue and clarity beats even that of the Bahamas.  We dropped our anchor in 10m of water and I could clearly see the chain paying out and the anchor getting set.  How convenient!

We loved our stay in Barcelona, spending four days in a yacht club right at the foot of the La Rambla, taking in the funkiness of the city.  Barcelona is so full of life, music and whimsical art. We spent our days working on the boat (yes, there is a lot of chores and fixes) and walking through the city, and the evenings in jazz clubs and even once made it to an opera!  We checked on the progress of Sagrada Familia since our last visit.  It is now consecrated, but far from being completed.  In fact while some parts have not yet been built, other parts need to be already renovated.  The plan is to complete the construction by 2026 in honour of the 100th anniversary of Gaudi's death.  A very ambitious plan we think.

But after the bustle of Barcelona, it has been nice to just hang out.  We took our time rounding Mallorca via the north and east coast before tying up for a few days in Palma.  Along the way we managed to do some hiking (which I believe was more intended for goats than people) and of course biking in the Tramuntana mountains.  We heard this before arriving, but now we can confirm that Mallorca truly is a mecca for road biking.  We have seen literally hundreds of road bikes along the way, of course pretty much all of them passing us (we have folding touring bikes, and that's my excuse). And not just any bikes, these were high end, fancy machines.  Lot of pro teams are apparently doing their spring training here. In certain towns, wherever you look - hotels, restaurants, roads...  there are bikes everywhere.  But oh the Tramuntana, a wild, spectacular mountain ridge running along the west side of the island, meaning that one part of a bike ride has to go continuously up and the other part continuously down.  Flat road doesn't exist. I have to honestly say that the hairpins on the way down scared the hell out of me, I much preferred the slow uphill.  The bonus is that along the way there are monasteries and limestone caves to be visited and after a bike ride (well, maybe even without a bike ride), there are wonderful treats to be had...

We have managed to avoid creating any more incidents (although Kuno did prompt the yacht club in Barcelona to install more steel plates on the gate to the dock after Kuno reached in around to open it when we didn't have the code and triggered the alarm) and we did manage to wrap a quay mooring line into our propeller, forcing Kuno to do a harbour dive to free it. Thankfully, no damage other than to our sailing egos. We considered rescuing a stranded goat from a rocky ledge above the water, but after contemplating its horns and the soft nature of our dinghy and eliminating Kuno's idea of lassoing the goat and pulling it behind the dinghy, we had to accept the principle of natural survival of the fittest and gave up.  Shopping trips to chandleries continue, the latest in Palma creating significant damage to our credit card for a very small number of very expensive boat bits and bobs.  I have now concluded that chandleries to men are the equivalent of shoe stores to women.  I just can't decide which camp am I in.  I like both.

As a slight diversion, we are now in Switzerland for 3 days, visiting with Kuno's mom, while Blue Moon is safely in the harbour of Palma.  It is so cool, a flight from Palma to Basel in Switzerland is just 1.5 hour!  But it is cold and raining here, so I am looking forward to returning to Mallorca.

That was a bit more of a first sail than I bargained for

It sure is nice to be Canadian these days.  We hoisted our Canadian flag shortly after moving onto the boat in La Grande Motte in France and it immediately started attracting attention.  The combination of our unusual boat and the flag became a magnet to the point that Kuno considered taking the flag down again as he spent all the time chatting and not getting on with his boat chores.

With the French election underway and the string of frequent security incidents in Europe, France seems to be a bit on edge.  In short few days, we were delayed at the airport coming in when part of the airport was closed off for security reasons (unclaimed luggage), then our train was stopped for an hour because there was a security incident and they had to evacuate the train station.  And to top it off, our own luggage almost created an event.  We left our old empty suitcase on the quay by our boat, thinking that overnight somebody might pick it up (must be a Canadian thing).  At about 11pm, I hear a knock on the boat, a French man saying that there is an unattended luggage and he is going to call the police.  How embarrassing.  So I took the luggage in and next day went to throw it out into the garbage bin.  But to make sure I don't create another incident, I made a show of opening it up, shaking it out and placing it open into the bin.. clearly no danger inside.  Phew, who would have thought.

We spent a week in La Grande Motte settling into the boat, setting things up, equipping and provisioning.  The 600lb crate we shipped from Vancouver with all our "stuff" arrived unharmed, even though a bit delayed.  But apparently that wasn't enough stuff and we still made endless trips to the chandlery and hardware store to buy even more stuff.  When I entered the hardware store for the second time, the girl there was ready, offering me bigger shopping baskets and storing my other bags by the cashier just so that I could make even more purchases than the day before.  But the boat is now fully functional with just a few things left to do and on Thursday morning we finally made it out of La Grande Motte.  We now have 3 weeks of sailing ahead of us with absolutely no place to be and no schedule or plan to follow.  We are truly following the wind.  And so, instead of sailing to Mallorca, we decided to hop along the Spanish coast to Barcelona before we cross over to the Balearics.

Our first sail was much more than I bargained for.  We started on a cold early morning in very calm wind, with about 80nm (or about 10 hours) to sail to a little town of Port Vendres on the French side of the border with Spain.  As to welcome us to the world of sailing, dolphins joined us, crisscrossing the bow wake for fun.  The wind increased steadily but unfortunately not quite in the forecasted direction.  We ended up with 25-30knt winds sailing close hauled or on beam all the way.  
We averaged 8-9 knot speed (in comparison, our old boat would have been about 6), registering up to 12 knots when surfing the waves.  It was a pretty wild ride for the first time on a new boat, with the bow getting buried and waves occasionally crashing over the side into the cockpit.  Not to mention that one of the shackles on the main sheet pulleys was busted and somehow nobody told us, so Kuno had to provisionally fix it while underway.  Once again I totally underestimated the weather in the Mediterranean.  And this became quite apparent when I saw the snowcapped Pyrenees in the background once we got close to the coast.  Clearly the northerly wind was going to be cold!  I put on all the warm clothes I possibly could and even then I was cold the whole way, sitting under a blanket tucked into the downwind corner under the dodger.  But, as I got used to the motion of the boat, I was once again reminded that boats are meant to do this and our new boat felt really solid and safe.  So in the end, even though I would have preferred an easier sail to start with, it was a good confidence building trip.

Now we are hopping along the coast south and its starting to feel like a vacation instead of a work party.  We even managed to get in a nice hike along the coast and today we are hoping to go biking along the river Ter. There is a bike path that leads about 200km and 2200m up all the way toward the source of the river in the Pyrenees.  That would be a great trip in the right direction!  But we will just manage a piece in the flatlands.