Palma to Motril

Surrounded by sparkling super yachts, Sunday Island departed the well protected anchorage of Las Lllettas, Palma Mallorca and motored peacefully into the morning darkness at 0500 on Thursday 13th October. With light and variable winds we motored and sailed our way to the island of Ibiza.
Fishing has become an enthusiastic past time onboard during passages. Before spending €600 plus on a decent rig we decided to put our decathlon rod & reel special and a €5 lure to the test. I have been reading “the cruisers handbook of fishing” to give me some more education to land our dinner. No sooner had I finished the first page of the book and “ziiinnnggggg” we were on. There was no time to skim over the “getting a fish on deck a sailing boat” chapter. In no time at all we landed a nice Mahi Mahi. Now the kids continuously watch the rod and if you are sailing within 200nm of Sunday island you will hear the kids shout “Fiiisssshhhh oooonnnnnn!!!” Whenever we get a bite!

Ibiza is well known as a party island with some of the most famous clubs in the world residing in the south of the island. As a cruising destination Ibiza boats some beautiful coastline and anchorages. We dropped anchor in a northern bay called Portinax late in the afternoon and enjoyed a swim and dinghy ride to the beach before a nice bottle of white wine to accompany our Mahi Mahi dinner.

The next morning after finishing school with the kids we dinghies ashore and hiked to the Moscarter lighthouse – the tallest lighthouse in the Balearic Islands – for a picnic lunch. The view from the lighthouse and cliff tops was excellent.

The following day found Sunday Island surrounded by bouys for a marathon swim and watched the swimmers pass by through the morning while we completed schooling and s few jobs abound the boat. After lunch we motored to Cala Charraca and went snorkeling and spear fishing amongst the rocks.

While waiting for the wind to swing to the East we rigged up the Walker Bay sailing dinghy and Explored the bay under sail. We sailed past many natives sunning themselves on the rocks and observed that the natives in this bay were absent of cloth.

When we returned to Sunday Island Issy and Max asked if they could sail the walker bay by themselves, so I donned my fins so I could swim near them, then pushed them off for their first solo voyage. I was impressed how well they handled the dinghy by themselves and it was manic to watch their new found freedom of self reliant transport by sail.

The walker bay was strapped back on deck with mast, sails, rudder and centerboard packed below and we raised anchor and sailed Sunday Islsnd down the coastline.

Our original passage plan had us sailing from Ibiza to mainland spain and then day sailing our way towards Gibraltar. The weather forecast for the next two weeks would not allow this luxury, and we only had two days of Easterlies to get us as far west as possible before the weather turned. We decided to make a three hundred mile downwind dash for Motril where we could enjoy the southern coastline of spain by land while we waited for the next Easterly winds.

At midday on 17th October we crossed the Prime Meridian of longitude 0* passing from the Eastern Hemisphere to the Western Hemisphere.

En route I managed to send my first emails and position report with the ICOM 7300 SSB and also downloaded a GRIB weather file. With a few more tweaks of the antenna I’m confident that we will be able to send text emails and receive weather GRIB files and weather fax on our way across the Atlantic. I will research a way of displaying a map in our blog with our updated position.

We will arrive in Motril today and then hop our way along the last 100nm of Spanish coastline to Gibraltar when the weather allows. With the latest long range weather forecast we may be able to pass through the Gibraltar strait on Monday 24th October however this will be determined by a large low pressure system in the North Atlantic.