Mallorca- Bay of Palma - south coast

April 17, we wake up unusually early and leave Cala Portinatx at 6:45am. It’s hard. The wind is S-SW force 5 then 4, with nice waves which will after some time make me throw up an apple I just had precisely at halfway. We have set our favorite superb patchworked genoa (we call it “full beaten” as opposed to “full batten”) and we ‘ll keep all the sails on till the end of the 52M. We arrived at the end of the day at Cala Portals in the west entrance of the bay of Palma. In this cala, very crowed at week end (of course we come in on a Friday) here are caves used as worship places since the Phenicians and recently reconverted into public toilets. On Saturday we watch the flow of tourists coming on catamaran tour boats and luxury yachts that anchor just like you park a car. And if you you do it badly and end up to close to other boats around you, no problem, you set fenders all around and anyway you won’t land and instead spend the day sipping drinks onboard and activate the bow propeller from time to time to avoid bumping into your neighbors. On Sunday we sail to the north of the bay, cross the way of a regatta involving very large yachts with giant colorful spinnakers and anchor in west of Las Illestas where we will stay a couple of day. We go for a walk in Palma, make some food shopping before leaving to the south coast and the Cabrera Island which is a national park for which you need a special permit. In the huge marinas of Palma there’s a collection of super-mega yachts and one in particular is much bigger than other with a very special look and name “Predator” which says much on her owner’s good spirit. In a word we will be happy to escape this place where Ata Jata and her 9.3 meters of modest rusty steel can’t afford the luxury of marinas and dreams of nice peaceful anchorages with jet-skis and flashy motor yachts. On the 22sd we leave the Bay of Palma for the Cala Pi [18M] on the South Coast. It’s a surprising cala, rather a narrow canyon where boats usually moor with one line to the shore to limit swinging; after few rounds about, we drop the anchor right in the middle. The beach at the end of the cala is in fact the mouth of a small now dried up river that used to flow down between the cliffs. Nice walk, sweet night, we take off again at noon the next day without knowing exactly where to go, we just want to find a way to apply for the permit to go to Cabrera. Finally we choose to anchor close to the small and not classy harbor of Colonia de Sant Jordi where the friendly employees help us to fulfill the form and fax it for us to the office in Palma.