Back in Germany earlier than expected…

Oh no wait, we’re actually in Mallorca.. but isn’t that nearly the same??

We’ve reached the Balearic Islands a few days ago! The crossing from Sardegna went extremely well! The main difficulty we encountered in earlier crossings was that tough conditions rendered the sailing extremely tiring: since we’re only two people, each of us spends half of the night awake while the other tries to sleep – which is rather difficult with strong winds or high waves… But during our trip to the Balearic Islands, the conditions were perfect. There were no waves at all and just enough wind to move forward sufficiently fast to do the journey in 48hours without being too tired 🙂 And that was it, our last big sea crossing! From now on, our journey will take us alongside the coast up to northern Europe which also means a lot more flexibility since we are much less dependent on long, safe, weather windows to travel.

Our first stop in the Balearic archipelago was Minorca, where we stayed near Mahon, the hometown of Mayonnaise (too bad we both don’t like Mayonnaise…), and the capital of Menorca. We spent two days there, visiting this charming old town, and the fortress of la Mola right beside our anchorage.

Yesterday, we spent the day at sea sailing to Mallorca. After two months of very bad amateurish fishing, and a few attempts of improvement we finally managed to catch a fish… and what a fish! A 3 kg Bluefin Tuna. Sara is proudly walking in the steps of her grandfather 🙂 We also named our new companion Konrad, after the gentleman who ramed his anchor into our boat hull during his departure maneuver and then left without a word ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We’re currently on the northeast side of Mallorca, where we want to spend a few days climbing and hiking. This is basically what our anchorage looks like from the top of one of the climbing routes so there’s really nothing to complain about:

We’re planning on staying in Mallorca for at least another week as we’re meeting some family and friends in Palma in a week’s time. From there, we’ll sail towards the Spanish mainland, potentially via Ibiza or Formentera. We’ll then follow the Spanish coast southwards and should reach Gibraltar in the middle of June 🙂

As usual, we’ve updated our planning map if you want to take a look at the cartography