Punta Negra

When discussing the blog entry for Tuesday 8 August, we came up with a couple of possible titles: ‘Photography Failure Day’ and ‘The Attack of the Purple Jellyfish’. The first is easily explained: I only managed to take one picture all day, but at least that was of the anchorage where we ended up, Punta Negra, which is what we finally called the blog entry, in keeping with my standard naming convention!

Charlotte at the Punta Negra anchorage   

‘The Attack of the Purple Jellyfish’, well, that’s a longer story but basically involves Nicky’s early morning swim and an unexpected encounter with one specimen of (we think) Pelagia noctiluca [Ed: and there were another 2 blobbing along next to it, hence Charlotte’s description of my being ‘attacked’ by jellyfish!]. Stings soothed with vinegar, Nicky reattempted her swim only to come face to face(?) with another jellyfish. She abandoned the swim idea.

The forecast for the day was for the wind to swing round to the northwest and increase and then to veer further to the northeast as the tail end of the mistral reached the south of Mallorca. As it turned out, the wind remained steadfastly in the southwest at about 10 knots for most of the day so we had a reasonably fast and enjoyable sail west and then northwest into Palma Bay. The anchorage we had planned to use was filled with yachts when we arrived and, with the southwestly breeze, the wind and the swell were going straight in too. It all looked rather uncomfortable so we hunted around for another place to stop. We found a temporary lunch/swim/maintenance stop a mile or so west, hunkered behind a small islet. The anchorage was busy and we could only lay out the very minimum of anchor chain or BV would have sat back onto some rocks but the location did us very nicely for a couple of hours whilst I fitted some new lazy jacks, Nicky lubricated the forward heads and carried out some other general cleaning [Ed: domestic joy!] and Charlotte sunbathed………. and we all waited for a change in the wind direction.

The sea breeze ran out at 1730 and the gradient wind filled in from the northeast as forecast. Better yet, the change in wind direction happened just about at ‘evening mass exodus’ time and, as we motored around the headland of Punta Negra, the large motor yacht taking up all the space in the centre of the bay was just about to lift his anchor. Perfect timing! We nabbed his spot in record fast time, much to the disappointment, I am sure, of the crew of a Dutch yacht anchored a little further out and in far more swell than us. So, the day ended with a swim for Nicky (no sign of jellyfish here) and another great barbecue meal – but just the one photo!

Punta Negra, Mallorca, Spain