Tag Archives | Nordhavn

[KensBlog] We’re having a SWELL time at anchor, but occasionally it’s a DRAG

By on August 15, 2015 in Sans Souci
Sans Souci, Nordhavn 68
[KensBlog] We’re having a SWELL time at anchor, but occasionally it’s a DRAG 8/15/2015 8:59:07 AM

I am typing this at 6:40am. I have been sitting in the pilot house watching the monitors since 5:30am.

A bit of background….

Normally, Roberta and I love to be at anchor. We tend to think of the boat as a means of transportation whose primary purpose is to deliver us to the good anchorages.

However, in a complete reversal of our normal behavior I sent an email to my friend Steven Argosy (Nordhavn 62, Seabird) yesterday saying that we had moved our flights to go home a week sooner, and that a huge factor was that we were tired of being at anchor.

We have been at anchor the majority of the time over the last two months. Most of those two months have been great, but not all. We have struggled with swell and wind. There have been many nights without much sleep. We have had a couple of instances with dragging anchors, including another one yesterday.

The good times have far outnumbered the bad times, but the cumulative effect of the bad times has ground us down.

The Western Med (Italy, France and Spain) do not have a huge number of great anchorages. All of the Med is known for high winds, but wind is not a problem if you are sitting in port, or in a well-protected anchorage. In Croatia, Greece and Turkey we sat through winds over 30 knots that lasted for days, but they were non-events because we were in anchorages that offered good protection.

Starting last year with Italy, we have had a heck of a time finding well protected places to anchor. We have it better than most, in that Sans Souci is a heavy boat and we have flopper stoppers. Typically we roll the least of any boat in an anchorage. No one should feel sorry for us. That said, most other boats have options that we do not have. Most boats head to port when the wind blows, whereas we do not have that option partially because it can be hard to find moorage for a boat our size in high season, and primarily because it is hard for Roberta and I to enter a port (Med-Mooring) without assistance. It is also probably true that a lot of the boats around us are more accustomed to “toughing it out” and do not mind the roll. Most of the boats around us are sailboats in the 20 to 40 foot range, and they roll unbelievably. It must be miserable inside of those boats, but they don’t seem to mind.

One moment that stands out from a few nights ago. It was 2:30am, and we were rolling quite a bit from side to side. Normally I put a second line on the tender when we go to bed, just as an extra layer of protection. We had traveled all day and I was exhausted and forgot to add the second line. Given the swell, I decided I shouldn’t wait until morning to add another line to it. So, I went back to the swim step which was rising and falling quite a bit, only to discover that my towing line which had been sitting on the swim step had fallen into the water. It shouldn’t have been left sitting on the swim step, but … sometimes when fatigued, mistakes happen. The tow line was still attached to the boat but part of it was flopping around in the water. So, there I was at 2:30am, being bounced around on the swim step, hauling in a loose tow line, and re-tying the tender. All of that went fine, so I decided I should probably check that the swim ladder (a small ladder that comes from under a trap door in the swim step) was secured. To open the trap door I had to lie on the swim step, and as I opened the door the boat descended into the swell. Water gushed up from beneath the opened hatch and became a geyser totally drenching me in salt water. Was I happy to be laying on the swim step in the dark dripping salt water at 2:30am after a long day and sleepless night? Well …no. It was my own fault, but I can’t say it was fun.

Also helping to keep life on Sans Souci interesting…

We are in the Balearic Islands (Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera.) They are beautiful and fun islands, but the anchorages are often filled with seaweed, called Posidonia. Apparently Posidonia is important to the environment and is being aggressively protected. Laws have been passed protecting the Posidonia. Boats anchoring on it can be fined and there are patrols to keep you honest.

http://lifeposidonia.caib.es

Mooring buoys have been placed in anchorages and boats are encouraged to use the mooring buoys. It’s a nice system in that boats can go to a website and reserve a specific buoy in a specific bay for a specific date, and there are people assigned to see that you get your buoy. A boat could explore the Balearic islands without ever needing to drop their anchor. However, the buoys can only handle boats of a certain size and Sans Souci is beyond that size (I think the limit is 15 meters, and we are nearly 22 meters, plus very heavy.)

Dropping an anchor on Posidonia is not easy. The anchor slides across the top rather than digging in. In order to get good holding you need to seek out a patch of sand and drop the anchor on the sand. In rare bays there is lots of sand to pick from, but in many, such as where we are now, most of the bottom is covered in Posidonia with occasional splotches of sand. To anchor I had to stand at the bow looking down while Roberta drove the boat until I found a tiny patch of sand. We then put the anchor onto the sand and hoped it set on the first try (which it did.) If we had to re-anchor at night where we couldn’t see the bottom … I’m not sure what we’d do.

Boats anchor where they can find a patch of sand, not where they can obtain the most space for themselves. This causes boats to anchor closer to each other than they normally would.

The bottom line:

–          Boats are anchored close to each other, limiting the amount of rode (chain) you can put out

–          Finding a place to anchor is difficult, and when you do, you can still have a problem if the boat rotates 180 degrees. When the boat rotates around the anchor it can come unstuck. This could potentially place it onto Posidonia where it will slide like on ice, rather than re-setting

–          The anchorages are open to the sea, allowing swell to enter

Yesterday was frustrating. We rolled all night making sleep difficult. Then, during the day we dragged in light winds after the wind changed its mind directionally so many times that we were spinning around the anchor like a second hand that couldn’t figure out which direction was clockwise. We noticed immediately, and quickly re-anchored, but it undermines confidence and caused us to cancel dinner plans ashore. If we can’t trust the boat to stay put, how can we leave it? We were well-set and had been here a couple days, but with the constant shifting of the wind, and constant jerking of the boat due to the swell, the anchor came unstuck. Normally it would re-set itself immediately, but Posidonia has a mind of its own.


Our view while dining on the aft deck of Sans Souci last night. As you can see, we weren’t suffering. One thing to note — see the guy that looks like he is walking on water? He is on a motorized surf board of some sort. It is smaller than a surf board though; more like a single ski. He circled the entire bay for over an hour! I’ve never seen such a thing before. Very cool! He never fell and seemed to be doing it more for his evening’s exercise than for sport.

Anyway … I am making this sound much worse than it is. There have been plenty of good times, and we are having fun. It is just the luck of the draw with respect to the weather. Sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t. The swell has been like a dripping faucet in an otherwise beautiful home. Over time, hearing the drip drip drip can make you crazy.

This looks like my normal navigation screen -- but, what you can't see is that it actually an ipad. On nights when I want to monitor the situation closely I use Remote Desktop running on an ipad to connect to the ship's navigation computer. This lets me see at a glance, while still lying in bed, where we are in our
This looks like my normal navigation screen — but, what you can’t see is that it actually an ipad. On nights when I want to monitor the situation closely I use Remote Desktop running on an ipad to connect to the ship’s navigation computer. This lets me see at a glance, while still lying in bed, where we are in our
This looks like my normal navigation screen — but, what you can’t see is that it actually an ipad. On nights when I want to monitor the situation closely I use Remote Desktop running on an ipad to connect to the ship’s navigation computer. This lets me see at a glance, while still lying in bed, where we are in our “circle.” The active circle when this picture was taken is the one on the right. The circle on the left is from earlier yesterday, and as you can see in the green tracings that go outside the circle — we dragged after holding position for two days. Ignore the red. It is an old track from when we first dropped anchor.


Each ring on the radar represents 150′ of distance. As I’ve mentioned previously my normal goal is to get three rings from other boats. That is unrealistic where we are cruising. But, you can see we did fairly well and have two empty rings around us — which is much better than most of the other boats.

I was up early because we had a couple squalls this morning (sudden rain and wind.) They weren’t bad, and under normal circumstances I’d ignore them. But, given how close we are to the other boats I’m sitting anchor watch.

Today is supposed to be the last day of the wind and swell. A period of calm should be settling in. We expect to be headed for Ibiza tomorrow at this time and these days of bad weather will soon be a distant memory.

Thank you!
Ken and Roberta Williams (and, Keeley and Toundra)
Nordhavn 68, Sans Souci

You can access the blog entry
here.

[KensBlog] We’re having a SWELL time at anchor, but occasionally it’s a DRAG

By on August 15, 2015 in Sans Souci
Sans Souci, Nordhavn 68
[KensBlog] We’re having a SWELL time at anchor, but occasionally it’s a DRAG 8/15/2015 8:59:07 AM

I am typing this at 6:40am. I have been sitting in the pilot house watching the monitors since 5:30am.

A bit of background….

Normally, Roberta and I love to be at anchor. We tend to think of the boat as a means of transportation whose primary purpose is to deliver us to the good anchorages.

However, in a complete reversal of our normal behavior I sent an email to my friend Steven Argosy (Nordhavn 62, Seabird) yesterday saying that we had moved our flights to go home a week sooner, and that a huge factor was that we were tired of being at anchor.

We have been at anchor the majority of the time over the last two months. Most of those two months have been great, but not all. We have struggled with swell and wind. There have been many nights without much sleep. We have had a couple of instances with dragging anchors, including another one yesterday.

The good times have far outnumbered the bad times, but the cumulative effect of the bad times has ground us down.

The Western Med (Italy, France and Spain) do not have a huge number of great anchorages. All of the Med is known for high winds, but wind is not a problem if you are sitting in port, or in a well-protected anchorage. In Croatia, Greece and Turkey we sat through winds over 30 knots that lasted for days, but they were non-events because we were in anchorages that offered good protection.

Starting last year with Italy, we have had a heck of a time finding well protected places to anchor. We have it better than most, in that Sans Souci is a heavy boat and we have flopper stoppers. Typically we roll the least of any boat in an anchorage. No one should feel sorry for us. That said, most other boats have options that we do not have. Most boats head to port when the wind blows, whereas we do not have that option partially because it can be hard to find moorage for a boat our size in high season, and primarily because it is hard for Roberta and I to enter a port (Med-Mooring) without assistance. It is also probably true that a lot of the boats around us are more accustomed to “toughing it out” and do not mind the roll. Most of the boats around us are sailboats in the 20 to 40 foot range, and they roll unbelievably. It must be miserable inside of those boats, but they don’t seem to mind.

One moment that stands out from a few nights ago. It was 2:30am, and we were rolling quite a bit from side to side. Normally I put a second line on the tender when we go to bed, just as an extra layer of protection. We had traveled all day and I was exhausted and forgot to add the second line. Given the swell, I decided I shouldn’t wait until morning to add another line to it. So, I went back to the swim step which was rising and falling quite a bit, only to discover that my towing line which had been sitting on the swim step had fallen into the water. It shouldn’t have been left sitting on the swim step, but … sometimes when fatigued, mistakes happen. The tow line was still attached to the boat but part of it was flopping around in the water. So, there I was at 2:30am, being bounced around on the swim step, hauling in a loose tow line, and re-tying the tender. All of that went fine, so I decided I should probably check that the swim ladder (a small ladder that comes from under a trap door in the swim step) was secured. To open the trap door I had to lie on the swim step, and as I opened the door the boat descended into the swell. Water gushed up from beneath the opened hatch and became a geyser totally drenching me in salt water. Was I happy to be laying on the swim step in the dark dripping salt water at 2:30am after a long day and sleepless night? Well …no. It was my own fault, but I can’t say it was fun.

Also helping to keep life on Sans Souci interesting…

We are in the Balearic Islands (Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera.) They are beautiful and fun islands, but the anchorages are often filled with seaweed, called Posidonia. Apparently Posidonia is important to the environment and is being aggressively protected. Laws have been passed protecting the Posidonia. Boats anchoring on it can be fined and there are patrols to keep you honest.

http://lifeposidonia.caib.es

Mooring buoys have been placed in anchorages and boats are encouraged to use the mooring buoys. It’s a nice system in that boats can go to a website and reserve a specific buoy in a specific bay for a specific date, and there are people assigned to see that you get your buoy. A boat could explore the Balearic islands without ever needing to drop their anchor. However, the buoys can only handle boats of a certain size and Sans Souci is beyond that size (I think the limit is 15 meters, and we are nearly 22 meters, plus very heavy.)

Dropping an anchor on Posidonia is not easy. The anchor slides across the top rather than digging in. In order to get good holding you need to seek out a patch of sand and drop the anchor on the sand. In rare bays there is lots of sand to pick from, but in many, such as where we are now, most of the bottom is covered in Posidonia with occasional splotches of sand. To anchor I had to stand at the bow looking down while Roberta drove the boat until I found a tiny patch of sand. We then put the anchor onto the sand and hoped it set on the first try (which it did.) If we had to re-anchor at night where we couldn’t see the bottom … I’m not sure what we’d do.

Boats anchor where they can find a patch of sand, not where they can obtain the most space for themselves. This causes boats to anchor closer to each other than they normally would.

The bottom line:

–          Boats are anchored close to each other, limiting the amount of rode (chain) you can put out

–          Finding a place to anchor is difficult, and when you do, you can still have a problem if the boat rotates 180 degrees. When the boat rotates around the anchor it can come unstuck. This could potentially place it onto Posidonia where it will slide like on ice, rather than re-setting

–          The anchorages are open to the sea, allowing swell to enter

Yesterday was frustrating. We rolled all night making sleep difficult. Then, during the day we dragged in light winds after the wind changed its mind directionally so many times that we were spinning around the anchor like a second hand that couldn’t figure out which direction was clockwise. We noticed immediately, and quickly re-anchored, but it undermines confidence and caused us to cancel dinner plans ashore. If we can’t trust the boat to stay put, how can we leave it? We were well-set and had been here a couple days, but with the constant shifting of the wind, and constant jerking of the boat due to the swell, the anchor came unstuck. Normally it would re-set itself immediately, but Posidonia has a mind of its own.


Our view while dining on the aft deck of Sans Souci last night. As you can see, we weren’t suffering. One thing to note — see the guy that looks like he is walking on water? He is on a motorized surf board of some sort. It is smaller than a surf board though; more like a single ski. He circled the entire bay for over an hour! I’ve never seen such a thing before. Very cool! He never fell and seemed to be doing it more for his evening’s exercise than for sport.

Anyway … I am making this sound much worse than it is. There have been plenty of good times, and we are having fun. It is just the luck of the draw with respect to the weather. Sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t. The swell has been like a dripping faucet in an otherwise beautiful home. Over time, hearing the drip drip drip can make you crazy.

This looks like my normal navigation screen -- but, what you can't see is that it actually an ipad. On nights when I want to monitor the situation closely I use Remote Desktop running on an ipad to connect to the ship's navigation computer. This lets me see at a glance, while still lying in bed, where we are in our
This looks like my normal navigation screen — but, what you can’t see is that it actually an ipad. On nights when I want to monitor the situation closely I use Remote Desktop running on an ipad to connect to the ship’s navigation computer. This lets me see at a glance, while still lying in bed, where we are in our
This looks like my normal navigation screen — but, what you can’t see is that it actually an ipad. On nights when I want to monitor the situation closely I use Remote Desktop running on an ipad to connect to the ship’s navigation computer. This lets me see at a glance, while still lying in bed, where we are in our “circle.” The active circle when this picture was taken is the one on the right. The circle on the left is from earlier yesterday, and as you can see in the green tracings that go outside the circle — we dragged after holding position for two days. Ignore the red. It is an old track from when we first dropped anchor.


Each ring on the radar represents 150′ of distance. As I’ve mentioned previously my normal goal is to get three rings from other boats. That is unrealistic where we are cruising. But, you can see we did fairly well and have two empty rings around us — which is much better than most of the other boats.

I was up early because we had a couple squalls this morning (sudden rain and wind.) They weren’t bad, and under normal circumstances I’d ignore them. But, given how close we are to the other boats I’m sitting anchor watch.

Today is supposed to be the last day of the wind and swell. A period of calm should be settling in. We expect to be headed for Ibiza tomorrow at this time and these days of bad weather will soon be a distant memory.

Thank you!
Ken and Roberta Williams (and, Keeley and Toundra)
Nordhavn 68, Sans Souci

You can access the blog entry
here.

Passagemaking with a Nordhavn 2015-08-15 00:59:07

By on August 15, 2015 in Sans Souci
Sans Souci, Nordhavn 68
[KensBlog] We’re having a SWELL time at anchor, but occasionally it’s a DRAG 8/15/2015 8:59:07 AM

I am typing this at 6:40am. I have been sitting in the pilot house watching the monitors since 5:30am.

A bit of background….

Normally, Roberta and I love to be at anchor. We tend to think of the boat as a means of transportation whose primary purpose is to deliver us to the good anchorages.

However, in a complete reversal of our normal behavior I sent an email to my friend Steven Argosy (Nordhavn 62, Seabird) yesterday saying that we had moved our flights to go home a week sooner, and that a huge factor was that we were tired of being at anchor.

We have been at anchor the majority of the time over the last two months. Most of those two months have been great, but not all. We have struggled with swell and wind. There have been many nights without much sleep. We have had a couple of instances with dragging anchors, including another one yesterday.

The good times have far outnumbered the bad times, but the cumulative effect of the bad times has ground us down.

The Western Med (Italy, France and Spain) do not have a huge number of great anchorages. All of the Med is known for high winds, but wind is not a problem if you are sitting in port, or in a well-protected anchorage. In Croatia, Greece and Turkey we sat through winds over 30 knots that lasted for days, but they were non-events because we were in anchorages that offered good protection.

Starting last year with Italy, we have had a heck of a time finding well protected places to anchor. We have it better than most, in that Sans Souci is a heavy boat and we have flopper stoppers. Typically we roll the least of any boat in an anchorage. No one should feel sorry for us. That said, most other boats have options that we do not have. Most boats head to port when the wind blows, whereas we do not have that option partially because it can be hard to find moorage for a boat our size in high season, and primarily because it is hard for Roberta and I to enter a port (Med-Mooring) without assistance. It is also probably true that a lot of the boats around us are more accustomed to “toughing it out” and do not mind the roll. Most of the boats around us are sailboats in the 20 to 40 foot range, and they roll unbelievably. It must be miserable inside of those boats, but they don’t seem to mind.

One moment that stands out from a few nights ago. It was 2:30am, and we were rolling quite a bit from side to side. Normally I put a second line on the tender when we go to bed, just as an extra layer of protection. We had traveled all day and I was exhausted and forgot to add the second line. Given the swell, I decided I shouldn’t wait until morning to add another line to it. So, I went back to the swim step which was rising and falling quite a bit, only to discover that my towing line which had been sitting on the swim step had fallen into the water. It shouldn’t have been left sitting on the swim step, but … sometimes when fatigued, mistakes happen. The tow line was still attached to the boat but part of it was flopping around in the water. So, there I was at 2:30am, being bounced around on the swim step, hauling in a loose tow line, and re-tying the tender. All of that went fine, so I decided I should probably check that the swim ladder (a small ladder that comes from under a trap door in the swim step) was secured. To open the trap door I had to lie on the swim step, and as I opened the door the boat descended into the swell. Water gushed up from beneath the opened hatch and became a geyser totally drenching me in salt water. Was I happy to be laying on the swim step in the dark dripping salt water at 2:30am after a long day and sleepless night? Well …no. It was my own fault, but I can’t say it was fun.

Also helping to keep life on Sans Souci interesting…

We are in the Balearic Islands (Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera.) They are beautiful and fun islands, but the anchorages are often filled with seaweed, called Posidonia. Apparently Posidonia is important to the environment and is being aggressively protected. Laws have been passed protecting the Posidonia. Boats anchoring on it can be fined and there are patrols to keep you honest.

http://lifeposidonia.caib.es

Mooring buoys have been placed in anchorages and boats are encouraged to use the mooring buoys. It’s a nice system in that boats can go to a website and reserve a specific buoy in a specific bay for a specific date, and there are people assigned to see that you get your buoy. A boat could explore the Balearic islands without ever needing to drop their anchor. However, the buoys can only handle boats of a certain size and Sans Souci is beyond that size (I think the limit is 15 meters, and we are nearly 22 meters, plus very heavy.)

Dropping an anchor on Posidonia is not easy. The anchor slides across the top rather than digging in. In order to get good holding you need to seek out a patch of sand and drop the anchor on the sand. In rare bays there is lots of sand to pick from, but in many, such as where we are now, most of the bottom is covered in Posidonia with occasional splotches of sand. To anchor I had to stand at the bow looking down while Roberta drove the boat until I found a tiny patch of sand. We then put the anchor onto the sand and hoped it set on the first try (which it did.) If we had to re-anchor at night where we couldn’t see the bottom … I’m not sure what we’d do.

Boats anchor where they can find a patch of sand, not where they can obtain the most space for themselves. This causes boats to anchor closer to each other than they normally would.

The bottom line:

–          Boats are anchored close to each other, limiting the amount of rode (chain) you can put out

–          Finding a place to anchor is difficult, and when you do, you can still have a problem if the boat rotates 180 degrees. When the boat rotates around the anchor it can come unstuck. This could potentially place it onto Posidonia where it will slide like on ice, rather than re-setting

–          The anchorages are open to the sea, allowing swell to enter

Yesterday was frustrating. We rolled all night making sleep difficult. Then, during the day we dragged in light winds after the wind changed its mind directionally so many times that we were spinning around the anchor like a second hand that couldn’t figure out which direction was clockwise. We noticed immediately, and quickly re-anchored, but it undermines confidence and caused us to cancel dinner plans ashore. If we can’t trust the boat to stay put, how can we leave it? We were well-set and had been here a couple days, but with the constant shifting of the wind, and constant jerking of the boat due to the swell, the anchor came unstuck. Normally it would re-set itself immediately, but Posidonia has a mind of its own.


Our view while dining on the aft deck of Sans Souci last night. As you can see, we weren’t suffering. One thing to note — see the guy that looks like he is walking on water? He is on a motorized surf board of some sort. It is smaller than a surf board though; more like a single ski. He circled the entire bay for over an hour! I’ve never seen such a thing before. Very cool! He never fell and seemed to be doing it more for his evening’s exercise than for sport.

Anyway … I am making this sound much worse than it is. There have been plenty of good times, and we are having fun. It is just the luck of the draw with respect to the weather. Sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t. The swell has been like a dripping faucet in an otherwise beautiful home. Over time, hearing the drip drip drip can make you crazy.

This looks like my normal navigation screen -- but, what you can't see is that it actually an ipad. On nights when I want to monitor the situation closely I use Remote Desktop running on an ipad to connect to the ship's navigation computer. This lets me see at a glance, while still lying in bed, where we are in our
This looks like my normal navigation screen — but, what you can’t see is that it actually an ipad. On nights when I want to monitor the situation closely I use Remote Desktop running on an ipad to connect to the ship’s navigation computer. This lets me see at a glance, while still lying in bed, where we are in our
This looks like my normal navigation screen — but, what you can’t see is that it actually an ipad. On nights when I want to monitor the situation closely I use Remote Desktop running on an ipad to connect to the ship’s navigation computer. This lets me see at a glance, while still lying in bed, where we are in our “circle.” The active circle when this picture was taken is the one on the right. The circle on the left is from earlier yesterday, and as you can see in the green tracings that go outside the circle — we dragged after holding position for two days. Ignore the red. It is an old track from when we first dropped anchor.


Each ring on the radar represents 150′ of distance. As I’ve mentioned previously my normal goal is to get three rings from other boats. That is unrealistic where we are cruising. But, you can see we did fairly well and have two empty rings around us — which is much better than most of the other boats.

I was up early because we had a couple squalls this morning (sudden rain and wind.) They weren’t bad, and under normal circumstances I’d ignore them. But, given how close we are to the other boats I’m sitting anchor watch.

Today is supposed to be the last day of the wind and swell. A period of calm should be settling in. We expect to be headed for Ibiza tomorrow at this time and these days of bad weather will soon be a distant memory.

Thank you!
Ken and Roberta Williams (and, Keeley and Toundra)
Nordhavn 68, Sans Souci

You can access the blog entry
here.

[KensBlog] The Road To Mallorca

By on August 13, 2015 in Sans Souci

Sans Souci, Nordhavn 68
…

[KensBlog] The Road To Mallorca

By on August 13, 2015 in Sans Souci

Sans Souci, Nordhavn 68
…

Passagemaking with a Nordhavn 2015-08-13 18:39:01

By on August 13, 2015 in Sans Souci

Sans Souci, Nordhavn 68
…

Mahon, Menorca to Calle de Sant Vicenc, Mallorca

By on August 11, 2015 in Seabird

Point number 7 is where our first stop was and we then continued
on to Calle de Sant Vicenc, point number 13.

How we hated to leave Mahon!  It is such a nice friendly place with warm, friendly people and lots of interesting places to explore in town. Here is the thing:  it may seem that because we have a 4 month or so cruising season, we should be able to spend a long time at each place we visit. The Med, however, is a very big place with hundreds of potential stops. Add to that our plans to spend at least a month in Barcelona and we start to get to the end of the season quickly!

Since we really were not in too much of a hurry, we decided to add a few stops to our cruise to Barcelona, which would both be day trips. We had not gotten much input from people regarding good stops, but between us and our friends on Airstream, we came up with a few good anchorages. We have cruised along with Bill and Janet for a few trips now and we have it down to a science. He cruises at about between 6-7 knots and we do between 8-8.5 kts. He usually leaves a bit earlier than us and arrives a little later. At some point on the trip, we give a wave as we pass them. 

The first stop, Calle Galdano, was a small, semi enclosed harbor on the south side of Menorca with a tourist town attached to it. The anchorage itself was a bit tight as by the time we got there, other boats had already nestled in to the spots closest to shore. The only spot we could find with any protection was only about 100 feet from the rocky shore that jutted out from the base of the harbor.  

Seabird in the background and Airstream in the foreground

 We anchored in about 27 feet of water just off of Morro
de Llevant.  You can see at the top of the map where the
river leads into town from the bay.

Normally, I feel safest if I put out chain at a 6:1 ratio to water depth. We have found that here in the Med, that is not always practical because of space constraints. Here, the best we could do was a 4:1 ratio and we were perfectly comfortable with that as long as the anchor was well set. Seabird is really oversized on the anchor front. Most boats our size would have a 100 lb anchor and be happy. Ours weighs in at a very hefty 300 lbs! It is quite big for the boat size but the peace of mind that it gives makes it worth it. The downside is that if the hydraulic winch breaks, getting it up by manual means is a big chore. Maxwell, the manufacturer of the windlass, supplies a skinny quarter inch thick aluminum popsicle stick tool for emergencies that would make it impossible to haul up the anchor manually. Years ago when I had a manufacturing business I had the shop make a special tool 5 times that size that makes raising it manually at least doable. I have never needed to use it, but my friends Braun and Tina on Grey Pearl lost their hydraulics while we were cruising in the Aleutians Islands with 200 feet of chain out and the same 300 lb anchor as us. Fortunately, I had made two of the tools and they had one of them. 

To get to the town, we took the dinghy into a small river at the base of the harbor. Once you got past a narrow, shallow entrance, the town was directly ahead on the left with the local small fishing and tour boats tied up. We asked permission from one of the locals to dock there and he directed us to an empty space. We were not really interested in the tourist areas, but wanted to take a hike over the hill to one of the other bays, about a 1 hour walk on the trails.

 At the end was a crowded tourist beach that we wanted nothing to do with, so we turned around and went back to the boat.  

We planned on leaving at first light for our next destination. In the meantime, the rollers started coming in at about 4 pm. It was actually getting very choppy and many of the smaller boats had to leave as they were rafted to each other and starting to hit, and so they left the anchorage. Although we had a bit of movement, it was not all that uncomfortable and after a decent nights sleep we hauled anchor and headed to Calle de Sant Vicenc, on the north side of the main island in the Balearics, Mallorca. 

We had yet another perfectly smooth trip and found the gorgeous bay with only one other boat in it, allowing us to drop anchor in 20 feet of water with nothing but deep sand to keep our anchor happy and set.  We were able to put out 170 feet of chain, well beyond my normal amount.  Carol and I dove the anchor at one point and found it completely buried in the sand.

 Calle de Sant Vicenc is a shallow bay with a hotel and beach being the key feature on the landscape. We looked forward to taking the dinghy in and having a nice dinner. It wasn’t going to happen. Normally, all of these harbors have some sort of dock where boats at anchor can bring their dinghies into. Not here. We looked everywhere and decided that we were going to have to be happy just anchoring in a gorgeous spot, swimming and eating on board. We took the opportunity to don our mask and fins to check out our underwater mechanicals and for marine growth. Everything down under looked fine. I cannot recall in any of our cruising seeing water as clear as this. The bottom is a bright, whitish sand that reflects the sunlight and makes 20 feet of water seem like 3 feet.

 

 The hotel and beach were to the far left of the picture. I 
included a few more at the end of the blog.

On the opposite side of the bay from us were high cliffs where the younger kids were doing jumps, flips and dives into the water. The cliffs were up to 25 or 30 feet high, but as you can see, it did not discourage them one bit.  Maybe in our younger days….

 

 

Today was a big day. Since there was no wind and it was a calm anchorage, I decided to get wild and wooly and launch my drone for some aerial footage. The drone itself is a Phantom 2 plus which Carol reluctantly gave me for Christmas. It is a fairly sophisticated one considering it is mainly for consumer use. The drone has a digital 1080p movie camera on it with a gimbaled mount with anti vibration pads and can go 900 feet high and up to a quarter of a mile away. It takes amazing photos and movies with no indication of shaking in the movies.  Up until now I have not been brave enough to launch it off of the boat for fear of losing it into the water. Supposedly, if I lose communication with it, the drone’s internal GPS will remember where it took off from and return to automatically land at that spot. Problem is, being that I launched it off of a boat, even at anchor, the boat may not be in that spot when it decides to return and land, and it is not waterproof…….nor does it float.

 

 Shortly after this was taken I begged Carol for her 
assistance and a few bandages!

My first attempt at launching it by myself did not go well.  When it took off, instead of going up, it went sideways toward the side of the boat. Evidently, the brain inside of the drone was trying to take off vertically from the spot where it started, but the boat was moving at anchor, therefore, so was the spot where it took off.  I grabbed it and it banged into me, the spinning blades giving me a couple of nice slices in my chest.  I then had Carol hold it for me as it spooled up. She let go and up it went. Unfortunately I had neglected to fully charge the battery so flight time was limited. Click on the link below and you will see my amateurish video. At least you can see how gorgeous the water is!  I promise my next one will be more daring!

Click on this link below and when the window comes up, click on the arrow in the center of the screen to start the video.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8a5PF6uvSYXUHBSUEJsenFoM0E

Fortunately, it landed without incident.  I will get the battery fully charged for the next trip and blog which will be our cruise from here to Barcelona, our home for the next month or so……

 

A few more pics…..


Another photo taken on our hike at Galdana

 

 The beach and hotel in back of the boat at anchor in 
Calle de Sant Vicenc


Sunset at Calle de Sant Vicenc

And last but not least…

I wonder what they will do when they wake up and find out that their room has 
disappeared….

Mahon, Menorca to Calle de Sant Vicenc, Mallorca

By on August 11, 2015 in Seabird

Point number 7 is where our first stop was and we then continued
on to Calle de Sant Vicenc, point number 13.

How we hated to leave Mahon!  It is such a nice friendly place with warm, friendly people and lots of interesting places to explore in town. Here is the thing:  it may seem that because we have a 4 month or so cruising season, we should be able to spend a long time at each place we visit. The Med, however, is a very big place with hundreds of potential stops. Add to that our plans to spend at least a month in Barcelona and we start to get to the end of the season quickly!

Since we really were not in too much of a hurry, we decided to add a few stops to our cruise to Barcelona, which would both be day trips. We had not gotten much input from people regarding good stops, but between us and our friends on Airstream, we came up with a few good anchorages. We have cruised along with Bill and Janet for a few trips now and we have it down to a science. He cruises at about between 6-7 knots and we do between 8-8.5 kts. He usually leaves a bit earlier than us and arrives a little later. At some point on the trip, we give a wave as we pass them. 

The first stop, Calle Galdano, was a small, semi enclosed harbor on the south side of Menorca with a tourist town attached to it. The anchorage itself was a bit tight as by the time we got there, other boats had already nestled in to the spots closest to shore. The only spot we could find with any protection was only about 100 feet from the rocky shore that jutted out from the base of the harbor.  

Seabird in the background and Airstream in the foreground

 We anchored in about 27 feet of water just off of Morro
de Llevant.  You can see at the top of the map where the
river leads into town from the bay.

Normally, I feel safest if I put out chain at a 6:1 ratio to water depth. We have found that here in the Med, that is not always practical because of space constraints. Here, the best we could do was a 4:1 ratio and we were perfectly comfortable with that as long as the anchor was well set. Seabird is really oversized on the anchor front. Most boats our size would have a 100 lb anchor and be happy. Ours weighs in at a very hefty 300 lbs! It is quite big for the boat size but the peace of mind that it gives makes it worth it. The downside is that if the hydraulic winch breaks, getting it up by manual means is a big chore. Maxwell, the manufacturer of the windlass, supplies a skinny quarter inch thick aluminum popsicle stick tool for emergencies that would make it impossible to haul up the anchor manually. Years ago when I had a manufacturing business I had the shop make a special tool 5 times that size that makes raising it manually at least doable. I have never needed to use it, but my friends Braun and Tina on Grey Pearl lost their hydraulics while we were cruising in the Aleutians Islands with 200 feet of chain out and the same 300 lb anchor as us. Fortunately, I had made two of the tools and they had one of them. 

To get to the town, we took the dinghy into a small river at the base of the harbor. Once you got past a narrow, shallow entrance, the town was directly ahead on the left with the local small fishing and tour boats tied up. We asked permission from one of the locals to dock there and he directed us to an empty space. We were not really interested in the tourist areas, but wanted to take a hike over the hill to one of the other bays, about a 1 hour walk on the trails.

 At the end was a crowded tourist beach that we wanted nothing to do with, so we turned around and went back to the boat.  

We planned on leaving at first light for our next destination. In the meantime, the rollers started coming in at about 4 pm. It was actually getting very choppy and many of the smaller boats had to leave as they were rafted to each other and starting to hit, and so they left the anchorage. Although we had a bit of movement, it was not all that uncomfortable and after a decent nights sleep we hauled anchor and headed to Calle de Sant Vicenc, on the north side of the main island in the Balearics, Mallorca. 

We had yet another perfectly smooth trip and found the gorgeous bay with only one other boat in it, allowing us to drop anchor in 20 feet of water with nothing but deep sand to keep our anchor happy and set.  We were able to put out 170 feet of chain, well beyond my normal amount.  Carol and I dove the anchor at one point and found it completely buried in the sand.

 Calle de Sant Vicenc is a shallow bay with a hotel and beach being the key feature on the landscape. We looked forward to taking the dinghy in and having a nice dinner. It wasn’t going to happen. Normally, all of these harbors have some sort of dock where boats at anchor can bring their dinghies into. Not here. We looked everywhere and decided that we were going to have to be happy just anchoring in a gorgeous spot, swimming and eating on board. We took the opportunity to don our mask and fins to check out our underwater mechanicals and for marine growth. Everything down under looked fine. I cannot recall in any of our cruising seeing water as clear as this. The bottom is a bright, whitish sand that reflects the sunlight and makes 20 feet of water seem like 3 feet.

 

 The hotel and beach were to the far left of the picture. I 
included a few more at the end of the blog.

On the opposite side of the bay from us were high cliffs where the younger kids were doing jumps, flips and dives into the water. The cliffs were up to 25 or 30 feet high, but as you can see, it did not discourage them one bit.  Maybe in our younger days….

 

 

Today was a big day. Since there was no wind and it was a calm anchorage, I decided to get wild and wooly and launch my drone for some aerial footage. The drone itself is a Phantom 2 plus which Carol reluctantly gave me for Christmas. It is a fairly sophisticated one considering it is mainly for consumer use. The drone has a digital 1080p movie camera on it with a gimbaled mount with anti vibration pads and can go 900 feet high and up to a quarter of a mile away. It takes amazing photos and movies with no indication of shaking in the movies.  Up until now I have not been brave enough to launch it off of the boat for fear of losing it into the water. Supposedly, if I lose communication with it, the drone’s internal GPS will remember where it took off from and return to automatically land at that spot. Problem is, being that I launched it off of a boat, even at anchor, the boat may not be in that spot when it decides to return and land, and it is not waterproof…….nor does it float.

 

 Shortly after this was taken I begged Carol for her 
assistance and a few bandages!

My first attempt at launching it by myself did not go well.  When it took off, instead of going up, it went sideways toward the side of the boat. Evidently, the brain inside of the drone was trying to take off vertically from the spot where it started, but the boat was moving at anchor, therefore, so was the spot where it took off.  I grabbed it and it banged into me, the spinning blades giving me a couple of nice slices in my chest.  I then had Carol hold it for me as it spooled up. She let go and up it went. Unfortunately I had neglected to fully charge the battery so flight time was limited. Click on the link below and you will see my amateurish video. At least you can see how gorgeous the water is!  I promise my next one will be more daring!

Click on this link below and when the window comes up, click on the arrow in the center of the screen to start the video.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8a5PF6uvSYXUHBSUEJsenFoM0E

Fortunately, it landed without incident.  I will get the battery fully charged for the next trip and blog which will be our cruise from here to Barcelona, our home for the next month or so……

 

A few more pics…..


Another photo taken on our hike at Galdana

 

 The beach and hotel in back of the boat at anchor in 
Calle de Sant Vicenc


Sunset at Calle de Sant Vicenc

And last but not least…

I wonder what they will do when they wake up and find out that their room has 
disappeared….

[KensBlog] An evening out in Mahon

By on August 10, 2015 in Sans Souci

Sans Souci, Nordhavn 68
…

[KensBlog] An evening out in Mahon

By on August 10, 2015 in Sans Souci

Sans Souci, Nordhavn 68
…