Tag Archives | Nordhavn

I am working on a final blog entry that will wrap-up and summarize our season. I should post that in the next few days.

In the meantime, here is a brief video I shot with my drone on our last day at Port Adriano. It doesn’t have much to do with boating, other than it begins by showing a bit of the squall that hit us while sitting in port.

The morning started fine and looked to be a nice day, but as I was sitting at my computer early in the morning I noticed the captain and stewardess (yes – they still call them that on yachts) from the next boat sitting on the front deck taking pictures. It made me curious what they were looking at so I went out to the bow and looked westward where their cameras were pointing.

There were dark storm clouds; some of the darkest I’ve seen and they were coming our way fast.

Within minutes the wind shot up to 20 knots, from nothing. Minutes later it hit 32 knots and we were besieged by rain. Pushed by the wind, the rain was coming sideways! I wanted to go outside to check our lines but I’d have been drenched in seconds.

And, then the lightning struck. It didn’t seem that bad, but it seemed incredibly close. Some of the strikes were really frightening the dogs.

As part of preparing for our departure, and in addition to all the packing, Roberta needed to do some final loads of laundry. As always, she called up the stairs to say, “Is it ok to start the dryer?” We were on shore power with all the power we could want, but it’s a rule on Sans Souci to alert me before starting any heavy appliances. I responded, “No problem” thinking that would be the end of it, but back came the reply, “Do you have the breaker off?”

Crap. I knew what this meant. The shorepower had gone out. I phoned Steven Argosy (Nordhavn 62, Seabird) to ask if his shorepower was out. It wasn’t. This meant it might just be our boat, so I headed down to the engine room.

We have an international shorepower converter called the Atlas. It allows our American boat to accept the 3-phase European power. I immediately noticed the bright red error light. On the LED was the message, “Voltage out of range.” That meant we had gotten some voltage surge due to the lightning and the Atlas had decided to shut down. I pressed reset and the error wouldn’t go away. “Why was this happening on our last day?,” I was thinking. I shut down the breaker right where the shorepower first enters the boat, powering down the Atlas completely. I waited a minute and powered it back up. It seemed to be coming up. Good! But, then it suddenly went black. Not good.

I checked the shorepower breaker. It was tripped. Double-crap. Normally this is an indication that the boat is drawing more amps than shorepower could provide. There was nothing running on the boat that required a significant amount of electricity. I flipped the breaker back on and started the power again. Seconds later, the power shut down again, but this time the breaker wasn’t tripped. It appeared I had blown the shorepower breaker.

We were connected to a 150 amp shorepower circuit. Tripping it should have been impossible. Something was definitely wrong. I decided that I should take a look at the power pedestal, and despite the driving rain went ashore to inspect it. Unfortunately, there were no breakers on it I could get at, and no indication of any sort as to whether the power was on or off.

I went up to the pilot house and called the marina, asking them to come reset the power pedestal. They, having common sense, said they wanted to wait for a break in the action and then send someone to check on our power. I knew this could take a while, so I used the time to type a note to the local gentleman (Richard) who I would be paying to look after our boat during the weeks until my guy Jeff, could fly over from Seattle to Mallorca to load Sans Souci onto a freighter.

“…
Richard:
CC: Jeff Sanson, Pacific Yacht Management

The storm today seems to have blown up Sans Souci’s shore power converter (the Atlas).

Richard – is there a time you could stop by today? (what time works for you?)

My plan is to:

– Run on the generator until we leave tomorrow
– Show you how to run the generator while we are gone
– Shut down everything on the boat to the bare minimum
– Have you run the generator twice a week for an hour (just to keep the batteries charged)
– Let Jeff figure out what to do when he gets here

Ken Williams
…”

I waited to hit send hoping for a miracle when the marina guy looked at the power pedestal. After about 30 minutes, there was a break in the rain, and someone did show up. I saw him look at the pedestal, open it, fiddle around, and then walk off. I walked out to the back deck to see what he’d found but he was already walking away. So, I went to my electric panel and seeing a green light shouted to Roberta, “The electricity is on! Yay!” The email above was never sent.

Anyway, this video shows just a brief bit of the rain. Steven (from Seabird) and I had made plans to fly our drones on the last day. However the rain was making it impossible. Plus, we were worried the marina would yell at us for taking up a drone in the marina. I called Steven to say, “It has stopped raining for a few minutes. Still want to fly? We can go up the hill to a playground I saw.” Steven said he didn’t want to take his drone out in the rain and I said I’d take a chance with mine.

As you’ll see in the video we did take the drone up, but the wind came back, and it started raining. The video is amazingly clear given that the drone was shaking trying to stabilize itself despite the wind. Had it been a clear day we’d have flown it over to the marina but I was too afraid of losing it. The rain was obscuring visibility and we shouldn’t have been playing at all .. but, what fun would that be? No guts, no glory. Plus, you know that old saying, “The primary difference between men and boys is the cost of their toys.” The best piece of the video is the part that unfortunately we lost. I was showing Steven how fast the drone could go and meant to stop it just before running into a fence, but … didn’t. Oops. The fence was fine and the drone was fine, but … it was a spectacular crash, and I wish the video hadn’t been lost. Anyway… this has very little to do with boating, but I think you’ll like it.

Port Adriano viewed from the air

Click the link below in order to see the video. Don’t forget to click the little icon in the lower right corner of the video that makes it display full-screen.

http://www.kensblog.com/aspx/vimeoplayer.aspx?vimeo=138440035

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

In just a few days Roberta, the dogs and myself will fly home to Seattle. For us, the season is over.

Three weeks from now Sans Souci will load onto a freighter also destined for Seattle.  We’re not sure when we’ll see her next. It could be Florida, when the boat changes freighters, but our best guess is that it will be sometime next spring in Seattle. We’re hoping the boat arrives in Seattle soon enough that we can do whatever repairs we want to do prior to next summer’s Pacific Northwest cruising season. That said, there’s nothing that would stop us from cruising the moment the boat arrives.

These past few days have been a mix of emotions.

We left Seattle in May 2009 alongside two other boats; Seabird and Grey Pearl. As most of the readers of my blog know, we crossed the Bering Sea together in the adventure of a lifetime: The Great Siberian Sushi Run (GSSR.)

Roberta and I split from the group in Hong Kong, with Seabird and Grey Pearl continuing on to Thailand while we shipped Sans Souci direct to Turkey. There were a number of reasons we split from the pack, but the largest one was that our dog (Shelby) was showing signs that it might be her last year and we didn’t want to leave her home. There was no way she could have made the trip to Thailand.

We thought our group would reconvene in Turkey the following year, but then the Grey Pearl was destroyed by fire in Thailand. Seabird joined us in Turkey and we did some amazing cruising of the Eastern Med (Turkey, Greece, Montenegro, Croatia, Italy, Malta), while Braun and Tina (owners of the Grey Pearl) dealt with their insurance company and the quest for a new boat.

A replacement for Grey Pearl was found on the US east coast, a Nordhavn 64, and was renamed to “Ocean Pearl.” Braun and Tina Jones started working their way toward the Med, with a side trip north to the Baltic, and we all made plans to rendezvous in Mallorca for some cruising, after which we would ship our boats to the Caribbean. This was to be our happy reunion before we start our next big adventure.

However… Roberta and I bailed on cruising the Caribbean.

I talked about it in an earlier blog, and as these things tend to be there were a lot of factors. We hit a long stretch of bad weather around the time we were making the decision, and when we thought about spending another three or four months on the boat this winter, we just decided it would be more fun to be at our normal winter home in Cabo. We are missing our family and look forward to being closer to home for a while. Plus, this Sans Souci (our Nordhavn 68) hasn’t yet had a chance to cruise the Pacific Northwest, one of the best cruising grounds in the world.

So, when Seabird and Ocean Pearl arrived yesterday, instead of our reunion being full of planning for our next big adventure, we all knew that it is really a goodbye. We will see each other again, and it would be awesome if we could cruise together again. Our boats have each come nearly 20,000 miles since leaving Seattle. It’s been a heck of a ride, but Sans Souci is returning home, and given that both Seabird and Ocean Pearl’s owners are east-coasters, they will also be moseying towards home. We haven’t discussed it, but I suspect they also see this as a homecoming for their boats.

It is awesome having us back together, and we’ll have fun, but it is only for three days, and it’s on land. That’s the depressing part.

But enough of all the sad stuff. We’ve still got two more days of celebrating!

And… there are actually TWO reunions going on. In 2004 we crossed the Atlantic as part of a group called the NAR: Nordhavn Atlantic Rally. Alongside us were Grey Pearl and the Nordhavn 57, Goleen (plus several other boats.) Goleen’s owners (Chris and Sonaia Samuelson) are now living on Mallorca and we have a large dinner planned with the whole group tonight.

One of the very best things about boating is the people you meet. And, one of the saddest things about boating is that the boats are constantly on the move. You meet people, and then they move their boat, and then you move your boat, and then your paths don’t cross again for many years, thousands of miles from where you first met.

The people who cross oceans on boats are a unique breed. It takes a different kind of personality to leave the comfort of home and explore the world, crossing vast bodies of water, on a tiny boat. There have been many occasions when Roberta and I were running offshore in heavy seas, watching lightning out the window while being shaken like a ragdoll in a dog’s mouth, where we said to each other, “Remind me again. Why am I here?” The answer is because that’s who we are, and that we would be hopelessly bored without the challenge and sense of adventure. This is the common bond we share with the other cruisers we meet.

Often, we have said to each other that if Toundra and Keeley (our pups) could talk, they would almost certainly say, “Why can’t we have normal parents?” They have their own passports and although they are young, they have logged many thousands of air miles, run thousands of miles at sea, and visited over a dozen countries.

I’m not sure what our next boating adventure will be. We’re not really thinking beyond getting the boat home. We’ve been paying for a boat slip for nearly a decade at Roche Harbor (in the San Juan islands near Seattle) and the boat has never been in it! We’re looking forward to spending some time at Roche Harbor and perhaps visiting Alaska again, and then – who knows?

Roberta and I are spending today making lists of things we want to get fixed when the boat gets to Seattle. The good news is that there isn’t much to be done. The bad news is that I am confident we’ll  add to the list between now and when the boat gets to Seattle. I just don’t know what those projects will be yet, but once you start thinking, “Wouldn’t it be nice if…?” I’m sure the list will grow.

Anyway… I’ll probably do one more blog entry after this one, just to wrap up the season, and when we know more about what are plans are for enhancing the boat, and cruising, I’ll do another entry.

The GSSR group in 2015, together for the first time this year. L to R: Roberta Williams, Braun Jones, Steven Argosy, Ken Williams, Tina Jones, Carol Argosy

The GSSR group in 2009 at our first stop in Hokkaido Japan (L to R: Steven, Carol, Braun, Tina, Roberta, Ken)

Ocean Pearl entering the marina at Port Adriano, Mallorca Spain. Ken and Steven jumped onto the bow to work the bowlines. Tina is in the back to do the stern lines, and Captain Braun is at the controls.

Ocean Pearl stern-tied at Port Adriano.

Our GSSR group in 2009 at the Ashiya Japan marina (near Osaka) at the completion of that year’s cruising. (L to R: Braun, Steven, Ken, Carol, Tina, Roberta – and, SHELBY!)

This picture doesn’t completely fit with the others, but shows what happens if you stay too long in a marina… Sooner or later the black water tank fills up (if you don’t know what that is, consider yourself lucky.) We’ve been in a lot of marinas where boats dump raw sewage into the water, and I even had a truly horrid experience having to dive into the water at one of them. It would be a sin to dump black water at a marina as beautiful as Port Adriano, and we were too lazy to take the boat out to sea to dump black water, so I had the marina send someone to do pump out. The cost: 150 euros! Yuck.

Seabird, stern tied at the Port Adriano marina.

Sans Souci – note the two boats we are parked between. From this side we look of comparable size, but we are actually much shorter than them.

Ocean Pearl is on the far right in this picture. I included the picture only to show how large the boats are around us. Sans Souci is also in the picture but hidden behind the blue-hulled 111’ sailboat on our starboard side, and the 108’ power boat on our port side.

The strange looking boat in the center of this photo is 130’ long and also named “Ocean Pearl.” In a bizarre coincidence, they were arriving to Port Adriano at the same time as Seabird and both Steven Argosy and I were tracking the boat thinking it was our friends. Steven tried calling them on the radio and couldn’t understand why they didn’t respond.

When word spreads that the GSSR is in town we seem to attract “fans.” Here Braun is trying to fend off several admirers (nah… they are performers from the show we were watching, but … I like my story better.)

Chris and Sonaia Samuelson from Goleen (Nordhavn 57). We ran side-by-side with them and Nordhavn 62 Grey Pearl in 2004 across the Atlantic.

Grey Pearl running next to Goleen, in 2004 during our Atlantic crossing.

Grey Pearl with Goleen in the background, in 2004 somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. Whee!

Seabird off the coast of Albania during a squall. Do we know how to have fun, or what?

Here’s our own Sans Souci in a series of pictures taken by Steven Argosy while we were taking a leisurely ride across the Bering Sea

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

In just a few days Roberta, the dogs and myself will fly home to Seattle. For us, the season is over.

Three weeks from now Sans Souci will load onto a freighter also destined for Seattle.  We’re not sure when we’ll see her next. It could be Florida, when the boat changes freighters, but our best guess is that it will be sometime next spring in Seattle. We’re hoping the boat arrives in Seattle soon enough that we can do whatever repairs we want to do prior to next summer’s Pacific Northwest cruising season. That said, there’s nothing that would stop us from cruising the moment the boat arrives.

These past few days have been a mix of emotions.

We left Seattle in May 2009 alongside two other boats; Seabird and Grey Pearl. As most of the readers of my blog know, we crossed the Bering Sea together in the adventure of a lifetime: The Great Siberian Sushi Run (GSSR.)

Roberta and I split from the group in Hong Kong, with Seabird and Grey Pearl continuing on to Thailand while we shipped Sans Souci direct to Turkey. There were a number of reasons we split from the pack, but the largest one was that our dog (Shelby) was showing signs that it might be her last year and we didn’t want to leave her home. There was no way she could have made the trip to Thailand.

We thought our group would reconvene in Turkey the following year, but then the Grey Pearl was destroyed by fire in Thailand. Seabird joined us in Turkey and we did some amazing cruising of the Eastern Med (Turkey, Greece, Montenegro, Croatia, Italy, Malta), while Braun and Tina (owners of the Grey Pearl) dealt with their insurance company and the quest for a new boat.

A replacement for Grey Pearl was found on the US east coast, a Nordhavn 64, and was renamed to “Ocean Pearl.” Braun and Tina Jones started working their way toward the Med, with a side trip north to the Baltic, and we all made plans to rendezvous in Mallorca for some cruising, after which we would ship our boats to the Caribbean. This was to be our happy reunion before we start our next big adventure.

However… Roberta and I bailed on cruising the Caribbean.

I talked about it in an earlier blog, and as these things tend to be there were a lot of factors. We hit a long stretch of bad weather around the time we were making the decision, and when we thought about spending another three or four months on the boat this winter, we just decided it would be more fun to be at our normal winter home in Cabo. We are missing our family and look forward to being closer to home for a while. Plus, this Sans Souci (our Nordhavn 68) hasn’t yet had a chance to cruise the Pacific Northwest, one of the best cruising grounds in the world.

So, when Seabird and Ocean Pearl arrived yesterday, instead of our reunion being full of planning for our next big adventure, we all knew that it is really a goodbye. We will see each other again, and it would be awesome if we could cruise together again. Our boats have each come nearly 20,000 miles since leaving Seattle. It’s been a heck of a ride, but Sans Souci is returning home, and given that both Seabird and Ocean Pearl’s owners are east-coasters, they will also be moseying towards home. We haven’t discussed it, but I suspect they also see this as a homecoming for their boats.

It is awesome having us back together, and we’ll have fun, but it is only for three days, and it’s on land. That’s the depressing part.

But enough of all the sad stuff. We’ve still got two more days of celebrating!

And… there are actually TWO reunions going on. In 2004 we crossed the Atlantic as part of a group called the NAR: Nordhavn Atlantic Rally. Alongside us were Grey Pearl and the Nordhavn 57, Goleen (plus several other boats.) Goleen’s owners (Chris and Sonaia Samuelson) are now living on Mallorca and we have a large dinner planned with the whole group tonight.

One of the very best things about boating is the people you meet. And, one of the saddest things about boating is that the boats are constantly on the move. You meet people, and then they move their boat, and then you move your boat, and then your paths don’t cross again for many years, thousands of miles from where you first met.

The people who cross oceans on boats are a unique breed. It takes a different kind of personality to leave the comfort of home and explore the world, crossing vast bodies of water, on a tiny boat. There have been many occasions when Roberta and I were running offshore in heavy seas, watching lightning out the window while being shaken like a ragdoll in a dog’s mouth, where we said to each other, “Remind me again. Why am I here?” The answer is because that’s who we are, and that we would be hopelessly bored without the challenge and sense of adventure. This is the common bond we share with the other cruisers we meet.

Often, we have said to each other that if Toundra and Keeley (our pups) could talk, they would almost certainly say, “Why can’t we have normal parents?” They have their own passports and although they are young, they have logged many thousands of air miles, run thousands of miles at sea, and visited over a dozen countries.

I’m not sure what our next boating adventure will be. We’re not really thinking beyond getting the boat home. We’ve been paying for a boat slip for nearly a decade at Roche Harbor (in the San Juan islands near Seattle) and the boat has never been in it! We’re looking forward to spending some time at Roche Harbor and perhaps visiting Alaska again, and then – who knows?

Roberta and I are spending today making lists of things we want to get fixed when the boat gets to Seattle. The good news is that there isn’t much to be done. The bad news is that I am confident we’ll  add to the list between now and when the boat gets to Seattle. I just don’t know what those projects will be yet, but once you start thinking, “Wouldn’t it be nice if…?” I’m sure the list will grow.

Anyway… I’ll probably do one more blog entry after this one, just to wrap up the season, and when we know more about what are plans are for enhancing the boat, and cruising, I’ll do another entry.

The GSSR group in 2015, together for the first time this year. L to R: Roberta Williams, Braun Jones, Steven Argosy, Ken Williams, Tina Jones, Carol Argosy

The GSSR group in 2009 at our first stop in Hokkaido Japan (L to R: Steven, Carol, Braun, Tina, Roberta, Ken)

Ocean Pearl entering the marina at Port Adriano, Mallorca Spain. Ken and Steven jumped onto the bow to work the bowlines. Tina is in the back to do the stern lines, and Captain Braun is at the controls.

Ocean Pearl stern-tied at Port Adriano.

Our GSSR group in 2009 at the Ashiya Japan marina (near Osaka) at the completion of that year’s cruising. (L to R: Braun, Steven, Ken, Carol, Tina, Roberta – and, SHELBY!)

This picture doesn’t completely fit with the others, but shows what happens if you stay too long in a marina… Sooner or later the black water tank fills up (if you don’t know what that is, consider yourself lucky.) We’ve been in a lot of marinas where boats dump raw sewage into the water, and I even had a truly horrid experience having to dive into the water at one of them. It would be a sin to dump black water at a marina as beautiful as Port Adriano, and we were too lazy to take the boat out to sea to dump black water, so I had the marina send someone to do pump out. The cost: 150 euros! Yuck.

Seabird, stern tied at the Port Adriano marina.

Sans Souci – note the two boats we are parked between. From this side we look of comparable size, but we are actually much shorter than them.

Ocean Pearl is on the far right in this picture. I included the picture only to show how large the boats are around us. Sans Souci is also in the picture but hidden behind the blue-hulled 111’ sailboat on our starboard side, and the 108’ power boat on our port side.

The strange looking boat in the center of this photo is 130’ long and also named “Ocean Pearl.” In a bizarre coincidence, they were arriving to Port Adriano at the same time as Seabird and both Steven Argosy and I were tracking the boat thinking it was our friends. Steven tried calling them on the radio and couldn’t understand why they didn’t respond.

When word spreads that the GSSR is in town we seem to attract “fans.” Here Braun is trying to fend off several admirers (nah… they are performers from the show we were watching, but … I like my story better.)

Chris and Sonaia Samuelson from Goleen (Nordhavn 57). We ran side-by-side with them and Nordhavn 62 Grey Pearl in 2004 across the Atlantic.

Grey Pearl running next to Goleen, in 2004 during our Atlantic crossing.

Grey Pearl with Goleen in the background, in 2004 somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. Whee!

Seabird off the coast of Albania during a squall. Do we know how to have fun, or what?

Here’s our own Sans Souci in a series of pictures taken by Steven Argosy while we were taking a leisurely ride across the Bering Sea

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

Roberta always says that her favorite word in the world is, “Serendipity.” It means an unexpected happy event.

And, that describes our day yesterday…

We woke up at 6am, at anchor at Formentera. We knew bad weather was coming and that we were going to be moving somewhere better protected from the swell.

Step one was to look at the weather services. Reports tend to be updated every six hours so we wanted the latest information. I looked at the reports before Roberta and said to her, “We’re in deep doo-doo. There are no safe places anywhere. Expect a miserable five days.” Roberta thought I was being overly dramatic and did her own analysis. Minutes later she said, “What do we do?”

We were suffering from Roll-Fatigue. I don’t know if that’s really a disease, as I just made it up. But… it was certainly dragging us down. We were tired of trying to sleep while hanging onto the sides of the bed. Some of it was just being unlucky with the weather, and some of it is Ibiza. There aren’t, or more likely, we didn’t find, well-protected anchorages. We were looking at nearly a week of being hunkered down waiting for a storm to pass with constant rolling.

“Maybe we should go back to Mallorca?,” I suggested.

“What good would that do? It’s going to be rolly there too,” came the response.

“Not if we go into port.”

“We don’t have a slip until September 1st and it’s too early to call the marina.”

“We could go into a port here on Ibiza”

“Nah. If we’re going into port, I’d rather try for Mallorca.”

“OK. Let’s go.”

“But, it is 70 miles, and the wind is from the East. It will be a messy ride.”

“OK. It will be a messy ride. Let’s go.”

So, at 6am, in the dark, we put up the tender, pulled in the flopper stoppers, and headed to sea with no clear destination in mind other than “Mallorca.”

When people talk about the cost of boats, I always ask them what waterfront homes cost. Pick anywhere; Miami, San Diego, Hong Kong, Hawaii, Mallorca, etc. Waterfront homes are not cheap. And, now, imagine there was a portable one? If you are in the mood to be elsewhere, what if you could just move your home? What premium would that command? Well ..that’s what we were doing. We wanted a change of landscape, and in minutes had our home back on the road.

I still have 1,400 gallons of fuel on board, so I decided to experiment with kicking the boat into high gear. We always cruise at about 8.5 knots, because it is very fuel efficient. At that speed I burn around 9 gallons an hour. Kicking it up to 9.5 knots costs eats WAY more fuel — closer to 15 gallons an hour. But… why not? I had the fuel, so .. I wasted some fuel.

To our surprise, the sea was dead calm. We have not had a rough ride this year! We’ve spent some rough days and nights at anchor, but every run we’ve made has been on glassy seas.

At 9am I phoned Port Adriano, a superyacht marina in Mallorca (www.portadriano.com) and asked if they could take me. At first the answer was no, but then after a bit of pleading space opened up! We were not only going to Mallorca we were going to an amazing place.

Port Adriano, Mallorca, Spain

Wow! What an amazing marina! We have seen a lot of marinas, and the initial impression may not be as good after we’ve been here a few days, but .. .my first impression is that this is the best marina we have ever been to. There are a large number of excellent restaurants, and shops, and a market — all literally behind our boat. I have 150 amp electric service to the boat (seriously!), wired internet, etc. At one point Roberta and I talked about staying in a fancy hotel for a few days to spoil ourselves. That talk is long gone. This is better. We had a fantastic Italian meal at a restaurant overlooking the back of the boat while watching a variety show that the marina puts on each night (comedians, singers, dancers, etc)

We had a good seat for the show (that’s Sans Souci in the background) — but, given that there are two levels of restaurants behind us, I won’t be putting water in the hot tub. The girls are enough of a show for the diners.

Entertainment at the back of Sans Souci – a great show! We are the shortest boat on this side of the marina, but also the tallest (except for the sail boat masts). But, we seem to collect lots of picture takers who think we are much bigger than we are. What we lack on longitude we make up for on latitude

The boats on the dock light up at night creating a show for all the tourists, who are dining at the restaurants in front. We didn’t light Sans Souci because it needs a good cleaning. We’re cleaning today, and tonight we’ll turn on the lights.

Last night was incredible, and this morning I didn’t want to get out of bed, it felt so good. A very serendipitous day!

After nearly three months on the boat, with the past couple of months almost entirely at anchor – it felt SO good this morning to feel civilized for a change. Here you see Roberta with her Café Latte Macchiato. (This is one of the many cafes right in front of our boat.)

We’ll now rent a car and explore Mallorca for a few days — so, no more blog entries for a bit.

Next up — GSSR reunion, sometime in the next week!

Thank you!
Ken and Roberta Williams (along with our crew-dogs; Toundra and Keeley)
Nordhavn 68, Sans Souci

PS – I just received this blog entry from an acquaintance now cruising in Greece. The last part of the article talks about what life has been like cruising in Greece during these times of financial instability there. I found it interesting and if you’ve been following the situation there you will to!

Click here to read it -> http://whereisleeze.blogspot.com.es/

Roberta always says that her favorite word in the world is, “Serendipity.” It means an unexpected happy event.

And, that describes our day yesterday…

We woke up at 6am, at anchor at Formentera. We knew bad weather was coming and that we were going to be moving somewhere better protected from the swell.

Step one was to look at the weather services. Reports tend to be updated every six hours so we wanted the latest information. I looked at the reports before Roberta and said to her, “We’re in deep doo-doo. There are no safe places anywhere. Expect a miserable five days.” Roberta thought I was being overly dramatic and did her own analysis. Minutes later she said, “What do we do?”

We were suffering from Roll-Fatigue. I don’t know if that’s really a disease, as I just made it up. But… it was certainly dragging us down. We were tired of trying to sleep while hanging onto the sides of the bed. Some of it was just being unlucky with the weather, and some of it is Ibiza. There aren’t, or more likely, we didn’t find, well-protected anchorages. We were looking at nearly a week of being hunkered down waiting for a storm to pass with constant rolling.

“Maybe we should go back to Mallorca?,” I suggested.

“What good would that do? It’s going to be rolly there too,” came the response.

“Not if we go into port.”

“We don’t have a slip until September 1st and it’s too early to call the marina.”

“We could go into a port here on Ibiza”

“Nah. If we’re going into port, I’d rather try for Mallorca.”

“OK. Let’s go.”

“But, it is 70 miles, and the wind is from the East. It will be a messy ride.”

“OK. It will be a messy ride. Let’s go.”

So, at 6am, in the dark, we put up the tender, pulled in the flopper stoppers, and headed to sea with no clear destination in mind other than “Mallorca.”

When people talk about the cost of boats, I always ask them what waterfront homes cost. Pick anywhere; Miami, San Diego, Hong Kong, Hawaii, Mallorca, etc. Waterfront homes are not cheap. And, now, imagine there was a portable one? If you are in the mood to be elsewhere, what if you could just move your home? What premium would that command? Well ..that’s what we were doing. We wanted a change of landscape, and in minutes had our home back on the road.

I still have 1,400 gallons of fuel on board, so I decided to experiment with kicking the boat into high gear. We always cruise at about 8.5 knots, because it is very fuel efficient. At that speed I burn around 9 gallons an hour. Kicking it up to 9.5 knots costs eats WAY more fuel — closer to 15 gallons an hour. But… why not? I had the fuel, so .. I wasted some fuel.

To our surprise, the sea was dead calm. We have not had a rough ride this year! We’ve spent some rough days and nights at anchor, but every run we’ve made has been on glassy seas.

At 9am I phoned Port Adriano, a superyacht marina in Mallorca (www.portadriano.com) and asked if they could take me. At first the answer was no, but then after a bit of pleading space opened up! We were not only going to Mallorca we were going to an amazing place.

Port Adriano, Mallorca, Spain

Wow! What an amazing marina! We have seen a lot of marinas, and the initial impression may not be as good after we’ve been here a few days, but .. .my first impression is that this is the best marina we have ever been to. There are a large number of excellent restaurants, and shops, and a market — all literally behind our boat. I have 150 amp electric service to the boat (seriously!), wired internet, etc. At one point Roberta and I talked about staying in a fancy hotel for a few days to spoil ourselves. That talk is long gone. This is better. We had a fantastic Italian meal at a restaurant overlooking the back of the boat while watching a variety show that the marina puts on each night (comedians, singers, dancers, etc)

We had a good seat for the show (that’s Sans Souci in the background) — but, given that there are two levels of restaurants behind us, I won’t be putting water in the hot tub. The girls are enough of a show for the diners.

Entertainment at the back of Sans Souci – a great show! We are the shortest boat on this side of the marina, but also the tallest (except for the sail boat masts). But, we seem to collect lots of picture takers who think we are much bigger than we are. What we lack on longitude we make up for on latitude

The boats on the dock light up at night creating a show for all the tourists, who are dining at the restaurants in front. We didn’t light Sans Souci because it needs a good cleaning. We’re cleaning today, and tonight we’ll turn on the lights.

Last night was incredible, and this morning I didn’t want to get out of bed, it felt so good. A very serendipitous day!

After nearly three months on the boat, with the past couple of months almost entirely at anchor – it felt SO good this morning to feel civilized for a change. Here you see Roberta with her Café Latte Macchiato. (This is one of the many cafes right in front of our boat.)

We’ll now rent a car and explore Mallorca for a few days — so, no more blog entries for a bit.

Next up — GSSR reunion, sometime in the next week!

Thank you!
Ken and Roberta Williams (along with our crew-dogs; Toundra and Keeley)
Nordhavn 68, Sans Souci

PS – I just received this blog entry from an acquaintance now cruising in Greece. The last part of the article talks about what life has been like cruising in Greece during these times of financial instability there. I found it interesting and if you’ve been following the situation there you will to!

Click here to read it -> http://whereisleeze.blogspot.com.es/

Roberta always says that her favorite word in the world is, “Serendipity.” It means an unexpected happy event.

And, that describes our day yesterday…

We woke up at 6am, at anchor at Formentera. We knew bad weather was coming and that we were going to be moving somewhere better protected from the swell.

Step one was to look at the weather services. Reports tend to be updated every six hours so we wanted the latest information. I looked at the reports before Roberta and said to her, “We’re in deep doo-doo. There are no safe places anywhere. Expect a miserable five days.” Roberta thought I was being overly dramatic and did her own analysis. Minutes later she said, “What do we do?”

We were suffering from Roll-Fatigue. I don’t know if that’s really a disease, as I just made it up. But… it was certainly dragging us down. We were tired of trying to sleep while hanging onto the sides of the bed. Some of it was just being unlucky with the weather, and some of it is Ibiza. There aren’t, or more likely, we didn’t find, well-protected anchorages. We were looking at nearly a week of being hunkered down waiting for a storm to pass with constant rolling.

“Maybe we should go back to Mallorca?,” I suggested.

“What good would that do? It’s going to be rolly there too,” came the response.

“Not if we go into port.”

“We don’t have a slip until September 1st and it’s too early to call the marina.”

“We could go into a port here on Ibiza”

“Nah. If we’re going into port, I’d rather try for Mallorca.”

“OK. Let’s go.”

“But, it is 70 miles, and the wind is from the East. It will be a messy ride.”

“OK. It will be a messy ride. Let’s go.”

So, at 6am, in the dark, we put up the tender, pulled in the flopper stoppers, and headed to sea with no clear destination in mind other than “Mallorca.”

When people talk about the cost of boats, I always ask them what waterfront homes cost. Pick anywhere; Miami, San Diego, Hong Kong, Hawaii, Mallorca, etc. Waterfront homes are not cheap. And, now, imagine there was a portable one? If you are in the mood to be elsewhere, what if you could just move your home? What premium would that command? Well ..that’s what we were doing. We wanted a change of landscape, and in minutes had our home back on the road.

I still have 1,400 gallons of fuel on board, so I decided to experiment with kicking the boat into high gear. We always cruise at about 8.5 knots, because it is very fuel efficient. At that speed I burn around 9 gallons an hour. Kicking it up to 9.5 knots costs eats WAY more fuel — closer to 15 gallons an hour. But… why not? I had the fuel, so .. I wasted some fuel.

To our surprise, the sea was dead calm. We have not had a rough ride this year! We’ve spent some rough days and nights at anchor, but every run we’ve made has been on glassy seas.

At 9am I phoned Port Adriano, a superyacht marina in Mallorca (www.portadriano.com) and asked if they could take me. At first the answer was no, but then after a bit of pleading space opened up! We were not only going to Mallorca we were going to an amazing place.

Port Adriano, Mallorca, Spain

Wow! What an amazing marina! We have seen a lot of marinas, and the initial impression may not be as good after we’ve been here a few days, but .. .my first impression is that this is the best marina we have ever been to. There are a large number of excellent restaurants, and shops, and a market — all literally behind our boat. I have 150 amp electric service to the boat (seriously!), wired internet, etc. At one point Roberta and I talked about staying in a fancy hotel for a few days to spoil ourselves. That talk is long gone. This is better. We had a fantastic Italian meal at a restaurant overlooking the back of the boat while watching a variety show that the marina puts on each night (comedians, singers, dancers, etc)

We had a good seat for the show (that’s Sans Souci in the background) — but, given that there are two levels of restaurants behind us, I won’t be putting water in the hot tub. The girls are enough of a show for the diners.

Entertainment at the back of Sans Souci – a great show! We are the shortest boat on this side of the marina, but also the tallest (except for the sail boat masts). But, we seem to collect lots of picture takers who think we are much bigger than we are. What we lack on longitude we make up for on latitude

The boats on the dock light up at night creating a show for all the tourists, who are dining at the restaurants in front. We didn’t light Sans Souci because it needs a good cleaning. We’re cleaning today, and tonight we’ll turn on the lights.

Last night was incredible, and this morning I didn’t want to get out of bed, it felt so good. A very serendipitous day!

After nearly three months on the boat, with the past couple of months almost entirely at anchor – it felt SO good this morning to feel civilized for a change. Here you see Roberta with her Café Latte Macchiato. (This is one of the many cafes right in front of our boat.)

We’ll now rent a car and explore Mallorca for a few days — so, no more blog entries for a bit.

Next up — GSSR reunion, sometime in the next week!

Thank you!
Ken and Roberta Williams (along with our crew-dogs; Toundra and Keeley)
Nordhavn 68, Sans Souci

PS – I just received this blog entry from an acquaintance now cruising in Greece. The last part of the article talks about what life has been like cruising in Greece during these times of financial instability there. I found it interesting and if you’ve been following the situation there you will to!

Click here to read it -> http://whereisleeze.blogspot.com.es/

Our goal this morning was to shift from our anchorage on the island of Ibiza to another anchorage on the island of Formentera.

The two-sided beach at Formentera stretches for miles.

It would be a fairly short ride, only about 9 miles, so I didn’t want to hassle putting the tender onto the bow. I wanted to pull it behind the boat.

My tow rope frazzled a couple days ago and I hacked together something I thought would work, but then wanted to add a second line to it. I figured that if my primary line broke I’d still have the backup and wouldn’t lose the tender.

Sans Souci’s tender. Ken had to dive in to attach a tow rope.

The tow hooks for the tender are beneath it, so I’d need to dive into the water. With 82 degree water, diving in is a good thing, not a chore.

At 9am this morning I went to the stern of the boat to dive in and when I looked down the entire tender was surrounded by small, about 6” long, jellyfish!

Jellyfish !!!!!

That quickly scuttled all thoughts of swimming. I remembered a sign on the beach that warned about the jellyfish and said not to go into the water if they were visible. 

We hadn’t seen them the prior day, so I decided to relax for 30 minutes and see if they disappeared. When I returned they were gone. I dived into the water, and within a minute had the backup line attached to the tow hooks.

Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain on the back of my hand. Crap! I knew immediately I had been bit. I did my best imitation of a surfer who has just been surprised by a shark and was out of the water in seconds. Standing on the swim step I looked back at the tender, and there it was. A bright red jelly fish.

The bite didn’t hurt too bad. It felt like a bee sting, although the sore area of my hand was a bit larger. I immediately remembered a French movie I watched a decade ago, Les Mesduses, in which the plot centers around a young lady who murders a not-very-nice boat captain by pushing him overboard into a bunch of jellyfish, where he is stung to death.

I was pretty sure I was going to live, so I went to take a shower and then headed up to my computer where I googled jellyfish bites. The first thing I read was, “Don’t put the sting into fresh water.” Oops. Too late.

The pain subsided and didn’t slow us down from departure, but… I’m in no hurry to dive back into jellyfish.  

Roberta and I have a bit of history with the island of Formentera.

Prior to owning our current boat we owned a Nordhavn 62, which made TWO trips to Europe.

The first was in about 1998 when we shipped the boat across the Atlantic on a freighter. We cruised the south of France for a couple of summers and even bought a boat slip near Monaco. At that time we did visit Formentera but we were much earlier in our boating careers and had a Captain from France come with us. He dropped anchor almost exactly where we are today and we enjoyed a lovely sunny day. I was a relative newbie to boating at the time and remember questioning why he anchored us so far from the beach. He explained that should anything go wrong we’d be safer in deeper water.

That night it turned ugly. We were hit by a huge squall that lasted for hours. We had sustained winds of 50 knots with gusts to 65 knots. There were perhaps a hundred boats around us and dozens of boats were blown onto the beach.  We were up all night standing watch and using the boat’s engines to push against the wind.

Luckily, our anchor held.

Then, in 2004 we heard about a cross-Atlantic Nordhavn Rally. Roberta and I wanted more experience in boating and decided to ship our boat back across the Atlantic to Florida, only to drive it back to France and put it in its own boat slip.

We learned a huge amount on that trip, and my book about the trip has become a bit of a boating classic:

Crossing an Ocean Under Power

Roberta’s parents were with us during the final weeks of that run and continued cruising with us after the rally.

Roberta and I remembered Formentera and remembered our anchorage here, and how great it was prior to the big wind. We asked Roberta’s parents, who had been on the boat during our prior trip to Formentera if they wanted to return and they said, “Sure!”.

At that time Formentera was considered much more remote than it is today. I remember it as kind of a hippy hangout. It was known for having a liberal dress code. I remember how big around Roberta’s mom’s eyes got as we were approaching and passed a boat with a naked young man standing proudly on the stern of his boat.

Nova Heuer (Roberta’s mom),  Roberta, and John Heuer (her dad). Here they are painting our Sans Souci logo onto the dock in Horta, Portugal. It’s a tradition for boats crossing the Atlantic.

We had perfect weather for our time anchored at Formentera, and to our surprise Roberta’s mom (who would have been around 75 at the time) took Roberta aside and said, “Could you guys go away for about an hour?” She wanted to talk Roberta’s dad into going skinny dipping! Being good kids, Roberta and I cruised around for an hour on the tender, making a garbage run to the beach.

This is our first return to Formentera in over a decade.

Even back then Formentera was popular, but apparently its popularity has exploded, and not in a good way. Whereas we used to anchor anywhere, we were directed to a place by a young lady on a tender as we approached.

Boats are not allowed to anchor on the seaweed (Posidonia) so she was  directing traffic to legal places to park. The first 100 yards back from the beach was roped off as a swimming area, followed by about a hundred yards of four rows of boats, and then the seaweed behind us. We thought she put us too tight to other boats, but then even more boats were placed around us. A 120’ boat placed next to us almost hit us, causing them to pull anchor and depart completely. A similar sized boat took their place minutes later.

There are more boats here than  I’ve ever seen in my life.

This was nothing like our prior visits! The hippy outpost had become tourist-central, and even the liberal dress code had mostly disappeared. A bit of the old Formentera still exists, but not much. Perhaps there is somewhere else on the island that is still fairly remote, but not where we are.

There are the stacked rocks in many places along the beach. I’m not sure what their significance is.

The beach at Formentera

Roberta and I tendered for a mile in either direction and there are at least four rows of boats, all anchored closer to each other than we would ever imagine possible. It reminded me of the old days of drive in movies! Some people were swimming, but not many. One person told me that there have been jellyfish problems here.

Tooooo many boats. Anchoring is much too dense and each time we thought another boat couldn’t arrive, it did.

Toundra, in her life jacket riding along with us through all the boats.

Boats were anchored on  each side of us so close that at times we almost touched

Each dot is a boat, and this is only a sampling of all the boats that were at the beach. We’ve seen a lot of things, but nothing like this.

The bottom line… We’re not that excited about being in a “boat parking lot” so we’ll probably leave tomorrow morning. If we come back we’ll try another part of the island.

I grabbed a 3d picture of our location, but our boat was moving too much, so it didn’t turn out well, but you can view it by clicking here

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

Our goal this morning was to shift from our anchorage on the island of Ibiza to another anchorage on the island of Formentera.

The two-sided beach at Formentera stretches for miles.

It would be a fairly short ride, only about 9 miles, so I didn’t want to hassle putting the tender onto the bow. I wanted to pull it behind the boat.

My tow rope frazzled a couple days ago and I hacked together something I thought would work, but then wanted to add a second line to it. I figured that if my primary line broke I’d still have the backup and wouldn’t lose the tender.

Sans Souci’s tender. Ken had to dive in to attach a tow rope.

The tow hooks for the tender are beneath it, so I’d need to dive into the water. With 82 degree water, diving in is a good thing, not a chore.

At 9am this morning I went to the stern of the boat to dive in and when I looked down the entire tender was surrounded by small, about 6” long, jellyfish!

Jellyfish !!!!!

That quickly scuttled all thoughts of swimming. I remembered a sign on the beach that warned about the jellyfish and said not to go into the water if they were visible. 

We hadn’t seen them the prior day, so I decided to relax for 30 minutes and see if they disappeared. When I returned they were gone. I dived into the water, and within a minute had the backup line attached to the tow hooks.

Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain on the back of my hand. Crap! I knew immediately I had been bit. I did my best imitation of a surfer who has just been surprised by a shark and was out of the water in seconds. Standing on the swim step I looked back at the tender, and there it was. A bright red jelly fish.

The bite didn’t hurt too bad. It felt like a bee sting, although the sore area of my hand was a bit larger. I immediately remembered a French movie I watched a decade ago, Les Mesduses, in which the plot centers around a young lady who murders a not-very-nice boat captain by pushing him overboard into a bunch of jellyfish, where he is stung to death.

I was pretty sure I was going to live, so I went to take a shower and then headed up to my computer where I googled jellyfish bites. The first thing I read was, “Don’t put the sting into fresh water.” Oops. Too late.

The pain subsided and didn’t slow us down from departure, but… I’m in no hurry to dive back into jellyfish.  

Roberta and I have a bit of history with the island of Formentera.

Prior to owning our current boat we owned a Nordhavn 62, which made TWO trips to Europe.

The first was in about 1998 when we shipped the boat across the Atlantic on a freighter. We cruised the south of France for a couple of summers and even bought a boat slip near Monaco. At that time we did visit Formentera but we were much earlier in our boating careers and had a Captain from France come with us. He dropped anchor almost exactly where we are today and we enjoyed a lovely sunny day. I was a relative newbie to boating at the time and remember questioning why he anchored us so far from the beach. He explained that should anything go wrong we’d be safer in deeper water.

That night it turned ugly. We were hit by a huge squall that lasted for hours. We had sustained winds of 50 knots with gusts to 65 knots. There were perhaps a hundred boats around us and dozens of boats were blown onto the beach.  We were up all night standing watch and using the boat’s engines to push against the wind.

Luckily, our anchor held.

Then, in 2004 we heard about a cross-Atlantic Nordhavn Rally. Roberta and I wanted more experience in boating and decided to ship our boat back across the Atlantic to Florida, only to drive it back to France and put it in its own boat slip.

We learned a huge amount on that trip, and my book about the trip has become a bit of a boating classic:

Crossing an Ocean Under Power

Roberta’s parents were with us during the final weeks of that run and continued cruising with us after the rally.

Roberta and I remembered Formentera and remembered our anchorage here, and how great it was prior to the big wind. We asked Roberta’s parents, who had been on the boat during our prior trip to Formentera if they wanted to return and they said, “Sure!”.

At that time Formentera was considered much more remote than it is today. I remember it as kind of a hippy hangout. It was known for having a liberal dress code. I remember how big around Roberta’s mom’s eyes got as we were approaching and passed a boat with a naked young man standing proudly on the stern of his boat.

Nova Heuer (Roberta’s mom),  Roberta, and John Heuer (her dad). Here they are painting our Sans Souci logo onto the dock in Horta, Portugal. It’s a tradition for boats crossing the Atlantic.

We had perfect weather for our time anchored at Formentera, and to our surprise Roberta’s mom (who would have been around 75 at the time) took Roberta aside and said, “Could you guys go away for about an hour?” She wanted to talk Roberta’s dad into going skinny dipping! Being good kids, Roberta and I cruised around for an hour on the tender, making a garbage run to the beach.

This is our first return to Formentera in over a decade.

Even back then Formentera was popular, but apparently its popularity has exploded, and not in a good way. Whereas we used to anchor anywhere, we were directed to a place by a young lady on a tender as we approached.

Boats are not allowed to anchor on the seaweed (Posidonia) so she was  directing traffic to legal places to park. The first 100 yards back from the beach was roped off as a swimming area, followed by about a hundred yards of four rows of boats, and then the seaweed behind us. We thought she put us too tight to other boats, but then even more boats were placed around us. A 120’ boat placed next to us almost hit us, causing them to pull anchor and depart completely. A similar sized boat took their place minutes later.

There are more boats here than  I’ve ever seen in my life.

This was nothing like our prior visits! The hippy outpost had become tourist-central, and even the liberal dress code had mostly disappeared. A bit of the old Formentera still exists, but not much. Perhaps there is somewhere else on the island that is still fairly remote, but not where we are.

There are the stacked rocks in many places along the beach. I’m not sure what their significance is.

The beach at Formentera

Roberta and I tendered for a mile in either direction and there are at least four rows of boats, all anchored closer to each other than we would ever imagine possible. It reminded me of the old days of drive in movies! Some people were swimming, but not many. One person told me that there have been jellyfish problems here.

Tooooo many boats. Anchoring is much too dense and each time we thought another boat couldn’t arrive, it did.

Toundra, in her life jacket riding along with us through all the boats.

Boats were anchored on  each side of us so close that at times we almost touched

Each dot is a boat, and this is only a sampling of all the boats that were at the beach. We’ve seen a lot of things, but nothing like this.

The bottom line… We’re not that excited about being in a “boat parking lot” so we’ll probably leave tomorrow morning. If we come back we’ll try another part of the island.

I grabbed a 3d picture of our location, but our boat was moving too much, so it didn’t turn out well, but you can view it by clicking here

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

Our goal this morning was to shift from our anchorage on the island of Ibiza to another anchorage on the island of Formentera.

The two-sided beach at Formentera stretches for miles.

It would be a fairly short ride, only about 9 miles, so I didn’t want to hassle putting the tender onto the bow. I wanted to pull it behind the boat.

My tow rope frazzled a couple days ago and I hacked together something I thought would work, but then wanted to add a second line to it. I figured that if my primary line broke I’d still have the backup and wouldn’t lose the tender.

Sans Souci’s tender. Ken had to dive in to attach a tow rope.

The tow hooks for the tender are beneath it, so I’d need to dive into the water. With 82 degree water, diving in is a good thing, not a chore.

At 9am this morning I went to the stern of the boat to dive in and when I looked down the entire tender was surrounded by small, about 6” long, jellyfish!

Jellyfish !!!!!

That quickly scuttled all thoughts of swimming. I remembered a sign on the beach that warned about the jellyfish and said not to go into the water if they were visible. 

We hadn’t seen them the prior day, so I decided to relax for 30 minutes and see if they disappeared. When I returned they were gone. I dived into the water, and within a minute had the backup line attached to the tow hooks.

Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain on the back of my hand. Crap! I knew immediately I had been bit. I did my best imitation of a surfer who has just been surprised by a shark and was out of the water in seconds. Standing on the swim step I looked back at the tender, and there it was. A bright red jelly fish.

The bite didn’t hurt too bad. It felt like a bee sting, although the sore area of my hand was a bit larger. I immediately remembered a French movie I watched a decade ago, Les Mesduses, in which the plot centers around a young lady who murders a not-very-nice boat captain by pushing him overboard into a bunch of jellyfish, where he is stung to death.

I was pretty sure I was going to live, so I went to take a shower and then headed up to my computer where I googled jellyfish bites. The first thing I read was, “Don’t put the sting into fresh water.” Oops. Too late.

The pain subsided and didn’t slow us down from departure, but… I’m in no hurry to dive back into jellyfish.  

Roberta and I have a bit of history with the island of Formentera.

Prior to owning our current boat we owned a Nordhavn 62, which made TWO trips to Europe.

The first was in about 1998 when we shipped the boat across the Atlantic on a freighter. We cruised the south of France for a couple of summers and even bought a boat slip near Monaco. At that time we did visit Formentera but we were much earlier in our boating careers and had a Captain from France come with us. He dropped anchor almost exactly where we are today and we enjoyed a lovely sunny day. I was a relative newbie to boating at the time and remember questioning why he anchored us so far from the beach. He explained that should anything go wrong we’d be safer in deeper water.

That night it turned ugly. We were hit by a huge squall that lasted for hours. We had sustained winds of 50 knots with gusts to 65 knots. There were perhaps a hundred boats around us and dozens of boats were blown onto the beach.  We were up all night standing watch and using the boat’s engines to push against the wind.

Luckily, our anchor held.

Then, in 2004 we heard about a cross-Atlantic Nordhavn Rally. Roberta and I wanted more experience in boating and decided to ship our boat back across the Atlantic to Florida, only to drive it back to France and put it in its own boat slip.

We learned a huge amount on that trip, and my book about the trip has become a bit of a boating classic:

Crossing an Ocean Under Power

Roberta’s parents were with us during the final weeks of that run and continued cruising with us after the rally.

Roberta and I remembered Formentera and remembered our anchorage here, and how great it was prior to the big wind. We asked Roberta’s parents, who had been on the boat during our prior trip to Formentera if they wanted to return and they said, “Sure!”.

At that time Formentera was considered much more remote than it is today. I remember it as kind of a hippy hangout. It was known for having a liberal dress code. I remember how big around Roberta’s mom’s eyes got as we were approaching and passed a boat with a naked young man standing proudly on the stern of his boat.

Nova Heuer (Roberta’s mom),  Roberta, and John Heuer (her dad). Here they are painting our Sans Souci logo onto the dock in Horta, Portugal. It’s a tradition for boats crossing the Atlantic.

We had perfect weather for our time anchored at Formentera, and to our surprise Roberta’s mom (who would have been around 75 at the time) took Roberta aside and said, “Could you guys go away for about an hour?” She wanted to talk Roberta’s dad into going skinny dipping! Being good kids, Roberta and I cruised around for an hour on the tender, making a garbage run to the beach.

This is our first return to Formentera in over a decade.

Even back then Formentera was popular, but apparently its popularity has exploded, and not in a good way. Whereas we used to anchor anywhere, we were directed to a place by a young lady on a tender as we approached.

Boats are not allowed to anchor on the seaweed (Posidonia) so she was  directing traffic to legal places to park. The first 100 yards back from the beach was roped off as a swimming area, followed by about a hundred yards of four rows of boats, and then the seaweed behind us. We thought she put us too tight to other boats, but then even more boats were placed around us. A 120’ boat placed next to us almost hit us, causing them to pull anchor and depart completely. A similar sized boat took their place minutes later.

There are more boats here than  I’ve ever seen in my life.

This was nothing like our prior visits! The hippy outpost had become tourist-central, and even the liberal dress code had mostly disappeared. A bit of the old Formentera still exists, but not much. Perhaps there is somewhere else on the island that is still fairly remote, but not where we are.

There are the stacked rocks in many places along the beach. I’m not sure what their significance is.

The beach at Formentera

Roberta and I tendered for a mile in either direction and there are at least four rows of boats, all anchored closer to each other than we would ever imagine possible. It reminded me of the old days of drive in movies! Some people were swimming, but not many. One person told me that there have been jellyfish problems here.

Tooooo many boats. Anchoring is much too dense and each time we thought another boat couldn’t arrive, it did.

Toundra, in her life jacket riding along with us through all the boats.

Boats were anchored on  each side of us so close that at times we almost touched

Each dot is a boat, and this is only a sampling of all the boats that were at the beach. We’ve seen a lot of things, but nothing like this.

The bottom line… We’re not that excited about being in a “boat parking lot” so we’ll probably leave tomorrow morning. If we come back we’ll try another part of the island.

I grabbed a 3d picture of our location, but our boat was moving too much, so it didn’t turn out well, but you can view it by clicking here

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