Sailing to Menorca

Leaving Île de Porquerolles   

Our early departure from Île de Porquerolles was a disappointment. The islands look to have plenty of interesting places to explore and, if our guide book is to be believed, lot of lovely places to snorkel in with loads of sea life to look at. However, we couldn’t have sat out the mistral there and we felt that the adjacent coast of France was also the wrong place to wait for the wind to go through, so heading south made sense with our diary date to meet Charlotte. We raised our anchor at 0745 on Friday 21 July, worked our way around the western side of the island and then set course for Menorca.

The forecast proved to be quite accurate and we initially bowled along at over 7 knots in a 19 knot wind. However, by midday the wind had started to drop off and we had to hoist the MPS to keep our speed up. Sadly at 1430 the wind had fallen to just 5 knots and so we dropped the MPS and switched on the engine.

A pod of pilot whales investigating BV   

Motoring along was fairly dull in itself but we did have some fantastic moments. Twice we were visited by pods of pilot whales. On the second occurrence the whales were all around BV and I was lucky enough to catch a picture of one surfacing right next to us.

Rubbish fisherman at work   

The wind dropped away to absolutely nothing and with little to do but look out we clicked into 5 hour watches overnight to get some good sleep.

Just after dawn I set up the fishing rod and just a few hours later Nicky called out that we had a fish on the line. Excitedly I reeled in the line only to discover that the ‘catch’ confirmed my status as a rubbish fisherman!

Motoring was predominantly the theme for most for the morning. We did an hour when the wind got up to 7 knots and we sailed but largely it was down at 5 knots or below.

Sperm whales (we think)   

The second major highlight of the passage was seeing sperm whales (we think!). We saw 3 pods. Two were about a kilometre away and so all we could really see was a dark shape in the water and the water spouts as the animals exhaled. However, the last pod we saw was much closer and I was able to take the photographs above.

Approaching Menorca and Cala de s’Isla   

At midday on 22 July the wind was back up to 7 knots and so the motor went off again and we were able to enjoy the peace and quiet of sailing, right up until 1800 when we had to switch it back on to make our way into the anchorage. Menorca is quite low lying and so we were less than 10 miles away before the coastline became clear. We had various options for where to go but eventually decided that we would anchor behind Isla Colom in Cala de s’Isla.

Situated on the northeast side of Menorca, it conveniently avoided extra transit and gave us time to move on if there was no space for us. The Balearics are busy with yachts in the summer months and we quickly realised that whatever anchorage we chose, we’d most likely be sharing it with a lot of other yachts. We finally dropped our anchor at 1840hrs; we’d sailed covered the 210 miles in 35 hours.

Cala de s’Isla, Menorca, Spain