Cala Boix Ibiza

Leaving the Cabo Malgrats anchorage   

Our plan for Friday 11 August was to leave Mallorca and sail to Ibiza a little over 50 miles to the southwest. Nicky and I made the early start leaving Charlotte to sleep through the engine starting at 0630.

Leaving Mallorca behind us   

In under an hour we were clear of the coast and bowling along with a reef in the main and the genoa poled out to starboard. Unfortunately, the brisk wind didn’t last and we soon had to let out the reef. There was enough wind to keep BV moving quite well but not as much as we had hoped for.

Ibiza ahead   

Further away from Mallorca we met the swell. With the boom held out by the preventer the boom was held fairly steady but we were finding that even with 13 knots of wind we were rolling a lot every few minutes when a particular wave and swell combination reached BV’s quarter. When this happened there wasn’t enough wind pressure to hold the sail out and it would flap and then reset, cracking like a whip as it did so. We tried various headings to try to minimise this and so, as we approached Ibiza, instead of aiming down the eastern side of the island we were pointing at the northern tip.

Northeast corner of Ibiza with Punta d’en Valls to the left   

Punta d’en Valls   

Our planned anchorage, Cala Boix, is on the southern side of Punta d’en Valls and so as we got closer we gybed and aimed between Punta d’en Valls on our right….

Isola Tagomago   

… and Isola Tagomago on our left.

Cala Boix   

Once we had passed Punta d’en Valls, we had just another mile to run to Cala Boix, which is tucked in under the high ground of the point. With the waves and swell coming from the north it looked to be a good anchorage to spend the night. When we arrived, there were already plenty of yachts anchored in the bay but it’s such a large bay that it was easy to find a space for BV with enough room to swing. Not, that is, that we could drop our anchor on sand. Cala Boix is a surprisingly weedy bay and the few sand patches that there are (mostly close to the edge of the buoyed off swimming area) were already occupied. Happily, the forecast was for a night of light winds so the poor holding in the weed would not be a problem.

Another sail repair   

The light winds were also good for something else: whilst lowering the sail we discovered that the whipping action as the sail had flapped had caused some damage high up just behind the luff so, for the second time in a week, our swim was put on hold, the sewing machine dug out and we carried out another patch repair. We had been planning to replace the mainsail after crossing the Atlantic but if we keep having to repair it at this rate we’ll need to get a new one made much sooner.

Cala Boix, Ibiza, Spain