Mahon

The North West wind gale is over, time to move on but the wind doesn’t feel like helping us. We give it a try, but we have the wind perfectly on the nose. After a few miles painfully gained, we give up and sail back to our mooring in Fornells. At least we got some fresh air. On May 18, we leave again with a light wind, against us again. We sail slowly for 13NM until we reach Isla Colom. We drop the hook in the well sheltered small cala “Arsenal d’es Moro”, near Grao. The island is unspoilt, not built up and host of thousands of seagulls, busy taking care of their babies and panicking at every move we make.



On the next day we take off for the capital city, Mahon. We ended up motoring all the way, on the 11M, because it’s flat calm. But it allows us to see our first turtle (maybe a loggerhead turtle, but we’re not experts). It stays at the surface instead of plunging and fleeing us; either it’s not in a very good shape or it’s not afraid of us at all. We spend our first night in Mahon at the Sunseeker pontoon (the best bargain but still 29,7Euros per night water and electricity included): showers, deep cleaning of the boat, filling up all the tanks (and other containers such as solar showers, bucket and bowl), provisioning and laundry. The next after filling the gasoil tank (17 liters!) we go to Cala Taulera, a sheltered and busy anchorage still free in the Bay of Mahon , at the foot of La Mola fortress.
We meet a Canadian couple from Vancouver, Tom and Liz on their 51 foot Spencer “Feel Free”. They have been leaving and travelling on boats for 30 years : Hawai, California, mexico, Pacific Islands, Australia, NZ, Japan, China, Indonesia, Malaisia, Thailand, the Andamans… and I’m miss a lot more (www.boatus.com ). They have sailed up the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal about two years ago and spent two winters in the Med, one in Turkey, one in Malta. They are on their way to the Canaries, Cape Verde and the Caribbean. They have tons of great stories to tell. We also exchange books and movies. Together with them we go ashore for a cultural day, first to the museum then to the prehistoric Talayot site of Teluco. In this settlement the Taula enclosure was the religious place. It looks like a Breton dolmen on a single leg…Tom and Liz like to collect things washed off by the sea on the beach as much as we do. They found a short ladder on the sea bed near their boat and offered it to us. After Ludo cleaned it, it looks almost brand new. We didn’t have any for the boat so we are looking forward to testing it when the water will be warmer. Still no ideal weather window for Sardinia instead we’ve been enduring another Mistral and Tramontana blow for the last two days.