June & first half of July in the Balearics

The Islands

The Sailing

As I type this, we are watching the island of Mallorca pass behind us off the stern and looking to the horizon for the outline of the Menorcan coast. It’s a short 50 nautical mile sail and we are cruising at 8 knots in an 18 knot wind on our tail, pushing us briskly along using both headsails to catch the wind. We call this wing on wing sailing and it is one of Farfelu special talents thanks to the solant sail setup that allows her to have both headsails set out on either side of the boat by what are called whisper poles (photo below). We have had a couple really great sails while touring the Balearics. We flew across from Ibiza to Mallorca on a single tack with six foot swells on our stern and 20+ knots of winds on our beam which made for a really fun and spicy 8 hour sail. We got to experience a bit what Farfelu is capable of. She feels safe, sails fast (we saw 11 knots speed over ground on that sail) and has a bit of a weather helm, a tendency to turn towards the wind that had Scott opting to surf the waves manually vs. auto pilot for most of the journey (we mostly sail on autopilot now, it’s quite a luxury.

We have heard fellow sailors joke that sailing in the Med stands for motor every day. While we are still in the early stages of our adventure with only a couple months of sailing the Balearic Sea under our belt, we have noticed there is a lot of good wind to be had so far this summer and we hope that continues! Part of if might be that we have no real agenda other than to catch the wind and explore new places, which means we can plan our route based on the wind and what the weather patterns are doing. Turns out, we have become quite obsessed with checking our weather apps! The Balearics see the effects of the Mistral winds that come shooting down from the Gulf of Leon in France. The effects can make for some nice sailing days as well as rolly anchorages if not planned for correctly, of which we have had both!

The People

The first few weeks of our time in the Balearics were focused around meeting up with, and getting to know the large fleet of live aboard cruising families touring the Med just like us! After a month of living at the marina in Valencia, the kids (and us) were ready to meet friends. We found a great community with this group and noticed how families are eager to meet other boat kids making them friendly, inquisitive, up for anything, and very interesting with all of their different stories of travel and sailing. Our kids jumped right into the mix and before we knew it we had groups of 8-12 kids showing up on our boat to swim, jump, play, eat, and then move on to another boat, pretty much ruling the anchorage! We have since split up into smaller groups or gone our separate ways as differing agendas move the fleet in different directions. The group stays in contact via a WhatsApp chat and keep tabs on each others whereabouts so we are able to meet up again when the circumstances allow. It’s fun to roll into an anchorage knowing we have friends there to share in a day excursion, a sundowner with the adults, and usually a boat sleepover with the kids. The group is constantly growing and we are up to 17 boats and counting which will make for a fun season of a both planned, and coincidental meet ups along the way.

The Boat

We continue to enjoy Farfelu as both a comfortable home and mode of transportation. Some of the challenges have been keeping her cool during the hot summer afternoons. We have added a large shade structure to cut down on the direct sun that shines on the pilothouse and cockpit, a solar powered fan that is everyone’s new best friend, and spraying down the teak decks before the sun goes down seems to help cool below decks from holding onto the heat from the day. Since we live on the water, there is usually a nice sea breeze blowing throughout the day and nights cool down to a manageable temp. We have fully embraced the Spanish lifestyle of the afternoon siesta as it usually is too hot between 4pm-7pm to do anything other than swim 🙂

We have added a few additional comforts including an air fryer for cooking (love it!) and a soda stream to cut down on cans and fancy up all the water we are drinking to stay hydrated. On the systems side of things, we upgraded the old, spent batteries with a new lithium battery bank. It was a big job to swap out batteries mid-journey but lots of dingy trips and several rental cars later, we now have an upgraded storage solution that eliminated the daily stress of power troubles and was well worth it! Our next upgrade to the power system will be a bank of four solar panels which will cut out the need to run a diesel powered generator to supply our daily energy needs, a must in the sunny Med!

Just like owning a home, keeping Farfelu running smooth takes daily cleaning and maintenance and we like to take a few days break after some of the larger, more time consuming jobs. The daily tasks of cleaning and keeping her ship-shape don’t last long and within just a day or two needs to be repeated but getting those things done in the morning before it heats up for the day seems to be a good motivator for swim time and afternoon siesta.

The Crew

Not going to sugar coat here, we have had some hard moments aboard our floating home, mostly due to the fact that the four of us are together 24/7 and when any one of us if feeling hot, tired, overwhelmed, stressed, or annoyed, the rest of us feel it to. We are finding a deeper level of comfortableness to be ourselves with each other and I know this will persevere for our family long after this adventure is over. The flip side is that we sometimes let down the restraint and respect we would grant to others and let our emotions fly. Also, we don’t have the luxury of the space to hide away when tempers flair up so we have lots of opportunity to be honest with ourselves and each other on how our reactions affect the whole family. We are taking this opportunity to emphasize acceptance, forgiveness, patience, and friendship while also encouraging each other to step into responsibility, restraint, ownership of our role in the family and as a crew member, and most importantly learning how to be comfortable with being un-comforable! That being said, most of our time is spent enjoying each other and this experience and there is no one I would rather share it with than these three people (and two furry free loading crew members who bring us joy on the daily!

Highlights from the Balearics

• Our favorite anchorage: Portitoxl (Port-i-chol) on the north coast of Ibiza
• Visit from our good friends the Crows
• Cliff jumping on Mallorca (from about 45 ft)
• Our favorite town: Portocolom
• Deep water solo climbing
• Wild boulder scramble/hike down a gorge to Sa Calobra beach, north cost of Mallorca
• Cracking sail from Ibiza to Mallorca
• Surprise visit from cousin Maddy whom we haven’t seen in 12 years
• Meeting a community of sailing families with boat kids
• Family sushi dinner in Palma and biking around the cathedral at night