Puerto de Pollensa, Mellorca, Islas Baleares, Spain 39° 54.2 N 03° 05.2 E
Woke up this morning and captured this. It smells like brush as opposed to a building on fire.
I was first to the galley this morning and made breakfast for John and I. At the time of the sausage purchase Alan made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with it. Besides, he has a diet that is somewhat less adventurous than, well, everybody. He is content to have his oatmeal with chocolate milk added. ? French?
So, John and I have been talking about chorizo and eggs for days. I split open the sausages that we bought in Bonifacio and fried them up. Literally, half the volume was grease. Fried some potatoes, scrambled some eggs… John got up and asked, “What is that wonderful smell”. I told him that we were eating off the roach coach this morning. The mystery meat looked red before I cooked it and was even redder after it was cooked. It kind of tasted like spicy venison. That was the closest we were going to get to chorizo.
Alan and John are down below working on the freshwater pump. A side note, a couple days ago when they were pulling up the anchor to meet me at the fuel dock John called me on the radio and said there was smoke coming from the engine room. It turns out that a bolt on the alternator sheared and the belt was slipping. They fixed that fast. Things break all over. The switch on the starboard windlass for bringing up the anchor stopped working in Fornells. Alan cut the wires, he goes in the anchor locker and I tell him when to connect them so we can pull up the chain as the boat moves forward and stays over the anchor. This works for now. Today we will look for a new switch if the stores are open. The good thing is that things are breaking now on our 1000-mile shakedown cruise from Italy to Gibraltar. Once we jump-off for the Canaries it will get much harder to fix things. The passages will be much longer, the anchorages few and very far between.
We have discussed going to Tangier, Morocco directly across from Gibraltar, then The Canaries, and the Cape Verde islands off Africa and then to Barbados. As of today we plan to leave tomorrow morning to go to Puerto de Andraitx, Mellorca, Islas Baleares, Spain 39° 32.7 N 02° 22.8 E on the west coast. We will go along the north coast, which is shorter and very scenic. I heard that another storm is forecast that is stronger, bigger and will last longer. We need to get there in time to wait it out. It seems to be the case that we are going to try to beat these weather systems and keep moving west.
11:46pm
I went into town about noon today while they stayed on the boat and worked. I was on a parts run. John tells me what the part is in Spanish, and then I make him write it down. How funny is this. They both speak more than one language and they send me in. I went to the chandlery and got a weight belt for me for scuba and some glue to patch the dinghy. I ran out of Euros to buy some Sikaflex caulk and they wouldn’t take USD. I found an exchange and got $40 and then went looking for a good hand operated can opener. The name for the hardware store is ferreteria. The chandlery told me where to go. Not what I expected but I found the part. We tend to buy a lot of little stuff on our trips to town because so many things are missing like, serrated knifes, knife sharpener, dish drying rack, hand clamps, etc.
On may way back in I heard my name yelled from far away and just made out John walking back to the boat with a bag of stuff. At the boat we all decided to take the bus in to the town of Pollensa, we’re at the port of Pollensa, and sight see. It cost one Euro to ride the bus and they were some nice looking buses with AC.
We were dropped off at the bus station in downtown, wandered through and then went up a stepped hill. The views and sights just kept getting better and better. I have so many pictures to send home but have run into a snag. Uploading takes a very long time. I will make slide-shows and they will have to wait. Hopefully, in late December I will be able to hand-off some discs to Clive in Martinique and they will make their way home.
Time got away from us and the sun began to set. We went back to the bus station and back to the boat. After our dinner I parted and went to the Internet café. It was around 10:30pm. Yes, things are open very late here and it’s normal. People don’t even start showing up for dinner until around 9pm.
When I got back to the boat at 11:45pm the lights were on and those two were talking in the main salon area. Many new things had just occurred. John had talked to Nancy and the weather was now an issue. Although, outside there was a clear blue sky this morning. It turns out that there is a system coming in that will conflict with another system and create 30-40 knot winds and predicted seas of 40 feet! The next anchorage that we were going to is open to the southwest and we would have been exposed to swells while in the anchorage. This is all supposed to start happening tomorrow and will probably hang around for a few days. The safest thing for us to do is sit tight where we are tied to a dock and have utilities, services, food, etc and wait it out. Weather will dictate where and when we go. We have revised the schedule and figure we will leave here on Saturday and go straight to Cartagena, Spain and not go to Andraitx or Ibiza. We talked about getting a car and exploring the island. Just yesterday we were remarking that we had just started to settle and too bad that we had to leave. I personally just figured out the lay of the streets and some of the stores.
And then… last time John was here he broke his wrist coming down a difficult hill that had some ruins going up it. This time he was here he had a 3/8” palm tree sliver surgically removed from his foot a couple days ago. Then, last night he got to the boat first and was walking the deck and stepped into an open lazarette at the transom and half-ass fell in. He twisted a knee, bumped some ribs and this morning is generally a sore monkey. Ironically, the best thing for all of us is for John to recuperate and wait out the weather. We decided that we would run as far as we could between systems and keep moving.
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