38 52.0 N 001 18.9 E Cale Jondal, Ibiza

Monday 5th July 2010

I forgot - my coordinates are wrong in previous blog - we are now E longitude, not W. R did not get slime when we crossed, but I did drench him with water.

We had the most pleasant, the easiest ever "channel" length crossing on 1st July. A gentle beam reach, wind no more than 6-12 knots, but a flat sparkly sea, so we managed to maintain speeds between 5 and 6.5 knots. 57 nm in 10 hours accompanied by many small groups of dolphins. A leisurely start at 8am and a leisurely finish at 6pm picking up a Posidonia Buoy in the marine reserve off Espalmador - a sandy spit between Formentera and Ibiza (or locally Eivissa). Posidonia Oceana is a sea grass that forms a meadow on the seabed, it is home to all sorts of small marine creatures including the seahorse. In various parts of the Med, there is a project underway to provide buoys (free here), and prevent fishing, anchoring and other activities that disturb the sea bed, with the aim of re-establishing these marine habitats. You can reserve a buoy online for only two days at a stretch, but with no wifi, we just took pot luck and found one vacant.

Fabulous place, white sand with a red streak at the water's edge, clear clear water going from deep blue to turquoise to pale green as you near the shore. Stayed here 2 days, swimming and exploring. Inland there is a protected lagoon that looked like it had a salt crust on it. From the boat we could see people walking in that direction, returning about an hour later (usually naked) and covered head to toe in caked on greeny brown mud. They leave it caked on for a good while before going in the sea to wash it off. Whether they have been lolling about in the lagoon and it has mysterious health giving properties (or they just like rolling in mud) I do not know.

The only thing to mar this idyllic spot is the use of generators. Why on earth can they not run them during the day when there is lots of activity and noise anyway, and not during the quiet calm of a morning coffee or in the early cool of the evening. Or park themselves away from the rest of quiet humanity. It's not everyone, but we had one motorboat on one side and a yacht on the other doing just that.

Went off to explore a bit of Formentera, anchored off the town, enquired at the marina there to find berthing for a yacht under 12 metres was a mere 169 Euros per night excl electricity and water! We'll stay at anchor thank you. Looked at a couple of other bays and overnight on the SW side of the island.

Now at Cala Jondal on the SW side of Ibiza not far from the airport. A lovely little bay, with three quite nice looking restaurants. Unfortunately they dominate the beach and access is difficult for exploring inland which would have been nice as it is our first cloudy day. But content here at anchor, we are near the Blue Marlin restaurant (googled it and seems quite famous!). They have live music every Sunday, so we have been treated to free live entertainment - first a Pedro somebody who was a fine guitarist and next a lady belter-outer of songs, American I think, who was surprisingly good.

Monday and the sun is shining again, all is quiet and we are thinking of the next move - would like to explore more of the island which looks nicely rugged to the NW. Also taxing us somewhat is where to leave the boat that is reasonable to go home for August - this is proving more difficult that anticipated. We will probably have to aim back to the mainland and go a lot further out of our way than we would have liked.

Thank you to Geof & Kate for mowing the lawn and eating the strawberries! The garden does look like a wilderness, Marion did warn me, but your pictures horrified me. I'll have to work on remote gardening! xx