The summer flow begins

The thermometer rises, the day stretches, the tourist crowd grows and the winds fade…  that’s it, the summer has begun!

Hello everyone, this time we’re on time for the weekly update! At the time of the last one, we were still in the Balears with Louis’ parents. This was the first time we had people joining us for a couple of days, and it was great to meet familiar faces again. After some heartbreaking goodbyes, we sailed off to Mainland Spain while Louis’ parents stayed in Ibiza to wait for their return flight and, of course, enjoy a few more hours of the crazy party life of the island 😉

During their stay, we had our first attempts at free diving in clear water and absolutely loved it. Given the right location, it’s like swimming in an aquarium. Alongside climbing and discovering local culture, this will become a new activity we’ll be looking for in the coming anchorages.

In the last days, we’ve really felt a shift in the rhythm of the journey, as the summer season takes off. On the plus side, the warmer temperature makes life much more comfortable (no more night sailing with skiing gloves and 4 layers of clothes) and it’s nice to see places come to life as the tourism takes off. So far we’re not yet at a point where there are too many tourists or too hot a temperature. However, the wind patterns also changed significantly: whereas at the beginning we were waiting for calm weather windows to travel and hoping that winds were not stronger than forecasted (we did get caught in some unpleasant storms), we’re now in the opposite situation! We are often blocked at anchorages because there can be days at a time with no winds at all and are sometimes stuck in the middle of a trip because we don’t have winds to move any further (God bless the inventor of the engine, but we try to use it as little as possible ^^).

It’s anyway better to fear no winds than to fear a storm and we can adapt. During the coming days, we’ll have to make shorter trips using the thermal winds that come for a few hours in the hot afternoons in order to make it to our next appointment: we will meet some friends in Cartagena. In terms of trajectory, it’s pretty straightforward now as we’ll be following the coast for the next few months 🙂

Have a good week!