Cala de Fornells

We left Cala Santa Galdana at 0800 on Saturday 22 July and worked our way clockwise around Menorca. Along the north coast there’s a marine reserve area and the coastline is altogether more rugged and wild with very little development in comparison with the south and west coasts. There wasn’t a great deal of wind and so we motorsailed for a few hours before switching to a poled-out genoa and main. That was laziness on our part; we should have hoisted the MPS but, frankly, we didn’t think that the wind would hold out.

Entering Cala Fornells   

Typically, the wind did last but we weren’t in a rush and so just trickled along at 4 knots slowly making our way to the narrow entrance to Cala Fornells. The extra time meant that we ran the watermaker on the way and so we arrived off the entrance with reasonably full tanks which was useful given that we expected to stay for a few days.

Once through the narrow entrance, Cala Fornells opens out into a large lake-like area. We joined lots of other yachts at anchored, a short dinghy ride south of the village.

 

Ashore, Fornells is a pleasant little village gently stepped up behind the small port area. There are a few cafés and restaurants, a bakery and a couple of mini-markets. Everything that we needed to relax here for a few days.

Historically Fornells was intended to be the initial landing point for the capture of Menorca by the British in 1798. As it turned out, a headwind meant that Commodore Duckworth landed his force at Addaya 4 miles east and Fornells was captured the following day.

Acarius   

Anchored next to us in the cala were Ross and Lisa Mack in their Bowman 40, Arcarius. They came over to say hello and we discovered that they are just starting their exploration of the Mediterranean. We met up a few times over the next couple of days and over drinks on board the conversation always flowed easily as we shared sailing experiences.

Cala Fornells was a sheltered anchorage and we had picked it so that Nicky could set to work on a bit of varnishing without the possibility of having to move whilst newly applied varnish was drying. Her sanding prep was followed by a daily coat of varnish and we calculated that we’d be able to get all but the last few coats done before Charlotte arrived. With clear blue skies the air temperature was up at over 30 degrees and so it was perfect conditions for the varnish to dry quickly.

Ross’ photo of BV    

Our anchorage was a little to the north of an extremely busy sailing club, which we later found to be Menorca Sailing, an extremely well-known RYA recognised sailing school. Throughout the day there were always a large number and variety of dinghies and windsurfers whizzing around the anchorage (and a good cross-section of levels of expertise too), so when we weren’t tinkering with BV there was always plenty to watch. A couple of the windsurfers had foiling kits fitted which neither of us had seen before. With these, in a reasonable breeze, the windsurfers were lifting out of the water by about a foot. It needed pretty nifty footwork to keep that all under control and we saw a couple of impressive wipe-outs.

We’d arranged to meet Charlotte in Addaya, just a few miles east of Cala Fornells. There’s a small marina and a boatyard there that we’d been recommended and we hoped to employ a rigger there to do a rig check on BV to satisfy the insurance company. The boatyard office spoke good English but the rigger is independent and our lack of Spanish was making setting up the inspection a little tricky. We decided that we’d have to move around to Cala Addaya so that we could book the rig check to be done around the same time that we met up with Charlotte. As a result, on Sunday 30 July we waved goodbye to Ross and Lisa on Arcarius and set off east. In the still of the early morning, they had taken a nice picture of BV and even managed to email it to us in time for us to receive it when we arrived at Addaya.

Cala de Fornells, Menorca, Spain