Mistral

07/08/201922/02/2020

Welcome!

Welcome to Chris and Karen’s sailing blog. We are planning to join the 2021 ARC+ and the 2022 World ARC and have just bought a wonderful Oyster 56. We can’t wait.

20/02/202022/02/2020

Back to a big marina for a change, the Real Club Nautico de Palma. I’m doing the Yachmaster Ocean Course here next week, so this is a good base for a few days. There’s little wind anyway so we’re not missing any sailing.

Whatever electrical adapters you have on board you never have the right ones!

And we’ve ordered Lithium Ion batteries to be installed next week.

19/02/202022/02/2020

Portals Vells

This bay was recommended to us by a bloke in a ship’s chanderlery. Absolutely beautiful.

17/02/202022/02/2020

Cala Major, Palma

A longish day of sailing to Mallorca. Plenty of wind until later in the afternoon. We anchored at Cala Major, the first bay to the west of Palma.

16/02/202022/02/2020

Ibiza

A short 11 nm trip from Formentera to Ibiza. The nav instruments keep failing when the bow thrusters are used. Will try to get them fixed when we get to Palma.

We explored the town a little. Very quiet out of season. Valentines dinner at the marina pizzeria with a posher meal the following evening.

13/02/202022/02/2020

Formentera

We had a couple of very pleasant nights here at anchor. We replaced the battery on the tender and had a play with it. We also got a technician to come to the boat to try to diagnose the electrical problems. Not fixed, but we have a better understanding now of the systems.

While trying to get the tender working I managed to fall into the water. Not cold at all. How Karen laughed. My new glasses fell off so we found a local driver who came to the boat and recovered them!

11/02/202022/02/2020

First Passage

Today (Tuesday 11 February) we made our first proper passage in Mistral. We left Valencia at 0605 and arrived at Formentera at 1940 – over 13 hours and 93nm.

We spent most of the time on the engine but once the sun was up and we left the fishing boats behind we sailed for a while. When the wind dropped the engine wouldn’t start! After some time troubleshooting and searching for circuit breakers, I switched the engine battery off and on again and it came back to life.