We had a pretty sporty passage from Palma, Majorca to Ibiza. It’s about 70 miles to the main port of Ibiza and since there was a strong wind advisory issued for Wednesday late morning, we decided to sail overnight on Tuesday night to avoid the worst of it. This turned out to be a good plan, because the forecast was accurate, but it also meant that we spent the night dodging nasty rain squalls complete with spectacular lightning bolts.

This is the sky before we left for Ibiza on Tuesday evening. We were able to dodge this one, but got clobbered by two others during the night.

Since we didn’t know what to expect from a Mediterranean squall, I dropped the main and furled the jib and continued under engines. This turned out to be a bit too conservative, because we only saw maximum gusts of 30 knots, but I figured better safe than sorry!

We arrived at the port of Ibiza at around 5am, and since it was raining and cold, and getting more windy and rough, we decided to anchor in the port until daylight and then try and find a berth in one of the marinas to get some shelter from the storms for a couple of days. Although I anchored, literally on top of the anchor symbol on our chart, I was woken up 20 minutes later by an annoyed pilot boat captain who chased us out of the port because there is “no anchoring allowed!” He directed us to an anchorage just north of the port, but it was so rough and rolly and was not going to give us any shelter from the increasing winds, that as soon as it was light enough to see, I decided to return to the port and take our chances with the angry pilot boat guy.

Once back at the port we tied up at an empty fuel dock and cooked breakfast while we waited for the marina offices to open, which they did at 9am. We stalled the fuel dock people by buying a bit of fuel which we didn’t really need, since our tanks were still pretty full, and as soon as we got word from the Ibiza Marina that they had a space for us, we moved over and docked Wildling and secured her from the building winds.

We will be here in Ibiza until Friday and then we will probably go over to the west side of the island for a night and then head over to mainland Spain to begin our return to France.

Here are a few photos of our voyage so far.

Arriving in Palma, Majorca. We had perfect sailing conditions, reaching at 10 to 11 knots in 12 to 15 knots of wind and smooth water. Lovely!

Night view from our anchorage in Palma

Here’s a photo of our sailbag that was destroyed during our passage between France and Majorca