The Balearic Islands are a Spanish archipelago comprised of four main islands; Menorca, Majorca, Ibiza, and Formentera.  Located approximately 150 miles east of the Iberian Peninsula these islands are actually exposed peaks of a mountain range stretching from mainland Spain.

Throughout history the islands strategic location in the western Med did not go unnoticed or unvalued. Subsequently the Phoenicians, Romans, Moors, Barbary pirates, Turkish privateers, the British, the French and finally Spain have all played parts in shaping up a fascinating if not tumultuous history.

“The Mediterranean has three good harbors: June, July, and Port Mahon.”

That famous quote by an Italian Admiral Andrea Doria (1468-1560) refers to Menorca’s capital, Port Mahon.  This would be our first stop, and being on the east side of the easternmost  Balearic island is the first place in Spain to see the sunrise. It has a population of about 30,000, and is indeed famous (in Menorca at least?) for being the best natural harbor in the Mediterranean, more on that later.

View at Picasa 24-Aug-2011 09:43, Canon Canon PowerShot SX20 IS, 4.0, 10.977mm, 0.001 sec, ISO 80

After two days and 215 miles at sea we found ourselves at this acclaimed old harbors entrance where Fortaleza de la Mola and Fort Marlborough strike an imposing first sight. It turns out that they would be our view for the duration of our stay here; we would eventually nestle right in between these huge forts (more on that too!). The town itself sits at the back of the harbor, some 5 kilometers away from the anchorage. Here’s a birds eye view:

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The anchorage was packed with boats and as we were threading our way through we could see that this would call for some precision anchoring. No problemo, happy for the opportunity to show off a little of our hard earned Slapdash anchoring prowess to these Med weekend warriors and regional cruisers. Watch and learn Pepe; the big dogs are in town.

After a reconnaissance lap through the anchorage we soon had Slapdash artfully nosed into the perfect position, I hit reverse to slow our roll. Instead of providing the reverse thrust we needed though, the drive leg instead popped right up out of the water and in a noisy splashy display we totally blew the approach.

The little yolk which provides the reverse lock we desperately needed was clearly not engaged. The normal procedure in this case is for the closest person to kick down on the top of the drive leg until you hear a reassuring ‘click’ sound. With this done, and after narrowly missing a couple of boats while regaining our composure we finally managed to thread our way back up into optimal anchoring position. We engaged reverse thrust: Blurp! Splash! Glug! Glug! Glug! Same damned problem!

At this point the lack of sleep, heat, tension, embarrassment and desire to just “GET THE EFFING HOOK DOWN!!” all collide. A sting of obscenities is unleashed, then another. In my mind I blamed Jaime for not ‘kicking the drive leg properly’ (as ridiculous as that sounds) and went back to kick it into place ‘the right way’, but that reassuring click remained elusive. Clearly I wouldn’t be able to blame Jaime for this and so found myself in desperate need of a plan B.

While Jaime kept us from crashing into our bemused neighbors (harder than it sounds when you can only go forward), I launched the dinghy for closer inspection. This inspection revealed that the little stainless steel spring whose job it had been to pull the latch back into its seat thereby making that reassuring clicking sound had broken.

Unable to anchor, I commenced with repairing this small problem by hanging upside down off the back of the transom while Jaime paraded us around in circles through the restricted anchorage. After a half hour of this I had somehow managed to get the job done without dropping any tools, springy bits or falling off the back of the boat; nothing short of miraculous.

View at Picasa 20-Aug-2011 03:01, Canon Canon PowerShot SX20 IS, 2.8, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 160

We brought her around one more time and with some fancy maneuvering the target position was reacquired.  We nailed our approach and dropped the hook. Ahhhhhhhhh, humbled but no matter, I can already taste the hard earned victory beer. Then the wind shifts and before I even have enough chain out I can see that we are far too close to another boat. Well, no sense getting upset about it. Nothing to do but haul the LOUSY FREAKING SON OF A MOTHERLESS ROTTED PIECE OF S**T… ahem, anchor up and start again.

After finally settling in we made our way to shore where I discovered that “Estrella Damm” was a mighty drinkable Catalan Pilsner. I was in the midst of this discovery when the ex-pat knob sitting next to me started going on about Mahon having the largest natural harbor in the world. Sorry to disappoint I said, but it’s not even close. He didn’t appreciate having his fictional monologue interrupted with pesky facts so with a chuckle and condescending look tried to impress me into accepting his delusion by citing his lofty and considerable nautical background.

Curious about what kind of nautical experience could give someone the ability to alter reality (and happy to change the subject) I asked him about it. Was he Navy? A Merchant Marine perhaps? His vague response included some ship names and I eventually realized that he had been going on about being a passenger on Carnival Cruises! In other words this ‘nautical experience’ he had been trying to impress everyone with basically amounted to buffet lines, folded towel animals, gem shopping and ice sculptures. I asked if he had been on any cruises that called in at any of those other meager natural harbors like Sydney, Pearl Harbor, Halifax, Rio, Falmouth, Wellington etc. He said, “yeah sure, what of it?” Moron.

I left before finding out if his IQ was contagious wondering why someone should feel the need to embellish their place in global harbor hierarchy when instead they could just claim their town as being the actual place where Mayonnaise was invented?

It’s true. Back in 1756 the British were calling the shots here, but then this Duke de Richelieu guy showed up in with 20,000 of his French homeboys looking for  a fight. As the story goes, at some point between rumbles with the Brits, this farmer whipped up a special sauce for our little French Duke. He liked it so much that after kicking British ass he took the recipe home with him and served it up at the victory bash in Paris. “Mahonnaise” (cause it’s from “Mahon”) was an instant hit. Mahonnaise became mayonesa in Spanish, mayonnaise in English. The Duke eventually died and the British empire fell, but mayonnaise went on to achieve world condiment domination.

You can see why Lord Nelson picked Mahon to park his bad assed ships-of-the-line here during the Napoleonic Wars. Georgian buildings climb the steep hills backing this very impressive and historic looking harbor and make it easy to imagine the warships anchored here being fitted out for battle.

View at Picasa 21-Aug-2011 11:56, Canon Canon PowerShot SX20 IS, 2.8, 5.0mm, 0.077 sec, ISO 800

I found Jaime and she had found carajillo’s. This Spanish drink is basically a cup of coffee ‘corrected’ with brandy or rum; although some versions have sugar, cinnamon and lemon involved. In Menorca they just bring you a cup of coffee and then put a bottle of brandy on the table so that you can mix them yourself! For a dollar! Now that’s service. It’s beginning to look as though Jaime will not see sleep or sobriety for the duration of our stay.

View at Picasa 21-Aug-2011 05:18, Canon Canon PowerShot SX20 IS, 2.8, 5.0mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 160

Earlier Jaime had visited the local authorities with our passports and boat papers, which has officially become a ‘girl job’ on Slapdash. I always come back from the experience feeling bedraggled, hassled and dehydrated. She gets offered tea, politely declines marriage proposals, gets offered comfy seats and basically gets treated like royalty. I was worried that her charms may not have worked this time because she said that they wanted both of us to come back to the police station with our passports. We had been traveling sort of um, under the radar since Turkey so I felt we had reason for concern. I was wrong. We showed up at the prescribed time and I watched in amazement as half the station came out and greeted Jaime like an old friend. They fussed over us for a while before we walked out the doors 30 minutes later with necessary stamps and papers. I was stunned and once we were a safe distance from the station found a bench and said to Jaime “is it just me or do you feel like we just got away with something?” At that moment a cop came running around the corner, saw us on the bench and asked us to “follow him back to the station”, and after a moments hesitation, “please”.

It turns out they had just kept the wrong copy of some form or another, but it definitely spiked my heart rate for a while there. It’s a good thing Jaime vetoed plan A; going for the guys sidearm on the way in.

We had some time to enjoy the place, a good blow was coming in from the North and we were in the perfect little hole to ride it out, and it would have been too if every single moron in the Med with a boat didn’t think exactly the same thing.

The day the bad weather was expected, more and more boats began to wedge themselves into the already packed anchorage. We watched in disbelief as a steady procession of sailboats and powerboats big and small elbowed their way in.

We spent the day trying to convince our fellow boaters (with varying degrees of intensity) that dropping their anchor right on top of ours and then hanging back so that our bow and their stern are LITERALLY touching was a really bad idea. This actually happened about three times, we haven’t seen anything like it before or (thankfully) since. Let me also point out that we were not being at all fussy. Those self-appointed anchor police guys that seem to think they are in charge of new boats arriving and so jump around on their deck, flapping arms, and shouting away at boats in German or something while they are trying to anchor really piss me off. It was a crowded anchorage, we were in for a blow, so of course expected things to be snugly. The people we chased away were the truly clueless cases, the `they aren’t seriously going to do that` people, and we tried to be nice about it. Except for this guy:

At one point during this truly educational day, we were t-boned. Another first for Slapdash. So this brain dead ass-clown was one of those boats that anchored right on top of us. Do these people realize that you have an anchor too, and that they are going to (at best) dislodge it, and (at worst) get tangled up in it virtually guaranteeing unwanted drama? He took some convincing but eventually had the good sense to move. Apparently we had just witnessed the limit of his `good sense` though.

Once he had the anchor up, he put his boat in gear and then went up on deck to start trying to tie the anchor down. We watched in disbelief as the boat slowly chugged around in a wide arc and eventually  headed straight for Slapdash amidships. We ran up on deck and started yelling at this guy, assuming he would see what was going to happen and get to his helm. This was the second time we overestimated his grey matter. After looking up he decided he would be better off on the bow trying to stop his boat from hitting us by hand. Unless he was Superman this was a plan doomed to fail. Jaime and I were waiting for the guy and all 3 of us tried to dampen the impact. Crunch!

I was distracted from trying to kill the guy because Jaime had the jump on me and was trying to do the same. It was a reflexive thing and I totally regret it. After he took off without so much as a `sorry` I wished I had held him instead of Jaime.

We inspected the damage and almost couldn’t believe our eyes, apart from a gauge on the thick galvanized rub rail, there was none! A few inches lower and he probably would have punched through the hull, but his bowsprit lined up perfectly with this hard rubber strip which did an exceptional job. I did notice that his chain roller was all bent over and messed up so we derived some satisfaction from having come out of the thing with less damage. Another guy came over in his dinghy and offered us some pictures of the other boat (that was now long gone) so that we could take them to the police if we wanted. I felt that a third trip to the police station in one day would be really pressing our luck so we declined.

After that we really didn’t want anything to do with the inevitable anarchy once the wind picked up, it was already bad enough and there was still no wind. We began looking for alternative anchorages. There were none suitable within range, so in the end we were forced to make the most of this one. We knew the wind would be changing direction later, and since nobody wanted to be at the back of the pack we were able to find an opening there. Being at the back means that everyone who drags is going to crash into you, so we were counting on the wind change to reverse our fortunes and put us right up front.

There was enough space back there for me to let out a good 100 feet of chain, so in shallow water like this with decent holding we would be going nowhere. Then we sat back and watched boat after boat come in, dump 5 or 10 meters of chain in a pile on top of their anchor, then without a second glance shut off the engine and start pouring drinks. It was going to be a disaster. The wind clocked around right on schedule at 11PM and at once went from zero knots to 35. It was from the north so we were now comfortably located in the pole position, and not one boat ahead of us.

Behind us it took 30 seconds for the first boat to drag into the boat behind it. This dislodged their anchor and tangled up together they charged through the anchorage like a wrecking ball. Then a 60 foot million dollar power boat at the back decided to light up the whole scene with his massive spotlight, completely blinding everyone in the process. This of course led to more crashing as boats no longer anchored drove into boats that were because they couldn’t see. I’m not sure what their intentions were but it didn’t matter because pretty soon they were dragging too. For the next two hours running lights were flicking on and off, engines were firing up, screams and shouts intensified just before crunching sounds, all the while boats circled around the anchorage in the dark. Total chaos, anchoring anarchy, a true Med mash-up!  Fortunately our shallow draft had us up in a no-go zone for most of these boats so nobody tried to anchor in front of us in the dark. We sat there and watched this gut wrenching show with front row seats until things finally started to simmer down at last by 3AM.

The wind would be out of the south for the next few days so we took the opportunity to get out of Mahon and explore the rugged northern coastline. This area has some beautiful and seldom visited calas (coves) which were perfect for our needs, well and truly sick of the human race at this point a few days exploring totally isolated anchorages were just what we needed. Our first stop was in Albufera, a beautiful place where Jaime`s kayak was stolen on our first night. We were clearly not far enough away yet. At the next stop we celebrated the 4 year anniversary of our trip (August 31^st). Soon we had recovered and were ready for a new island, despite all the crazy stuff happening we really enjoyed Menorca.

View at Picasa 23-Aug-2011 01:55, Canon Canon PowerShot SX20 IS, 2.8, 5.0mm, 0.001 sec, ISO 160

View at Picasa 22-Aug-2011 03:10, Canon Canon PowerShot SX20 IS, 4.0, 15.956mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 80

Looking back at it now I can see that I`ve kind of highlighted the bad stuff, but the island really is beautiful and we would soon learn that it is the most chilled, and although a little sleepy it`s the least touristic of all the Balearics.

View at Picasa 22-Aug-2011 03:07, Canon Canon PowerShot SX20 IS, 4.0, 5.0mm, 0.001 sec, ISO 125

View at Picasa 23-Aug-2011 00:54, Canon Canon PowerShot SX20 IS, 4.5, 5.0mm, 0.001 sec, ISO 160

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