Home / Not all plain sailing around the Med

By oceantools

February 7, 2005

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Gentle Cruising around the Mediterranean.

Rather uncharitably, I thought, the owners of my rented mooring in Barcelona had decided not to renew the lease, and so the search for a new home for Barbarella, my Oceanis 361, began. As luck would have it I found a new mooring in San Antonio de la Playa, just outside of Palma on the island of Mallorca. And so I had to move the boat from Barcelona over to her new home with a couple of good friends.
 
Our sailing adventures together had begun late last summer.  I'd managed to wangle some time off work and had invited two friends, Dave Wood and Dave Walker, to come along and help sail Barbarella from Barcelona over to, and around, the Balearic Islands. The crossing from Barcelona to Puerto Soller, on the rugged & beautiful northwest coast of Mallorca, was not been uneventful. 

Not long after setting sail in mid-September we'd encountered the most amazing electrical storm.  For a fourteen hour period eerie gold and orange clouds lit the night sky and were accompanied by fairly strong winds, in the order of 30 ­ 35 knots.

As we approached Puerto Soller the lightning finally punched through the sky and we witnessed it hitting the sea only a few miles off our starboard beam. And there we were, the only boat in the sea and with a 15metre mast pointing up straight up towards the lightning's origin.
 
When the new mooring became available to me in November I invited the 'Two Daves' and another friend, Chrissie, to help sail Barbarella from Barcelona's Port Olimpic to her new home in Mallorca.  We studied the local Spanish weather forecast before leaving Barcelona and observed that it was not going to be plain sailing...

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Great Story
SailorT - May 08, 2008 12:00 PM

Great story, sprising as well considering the Med is usually seen to be sailed to take a break, not fight a storm!! Love you by the way, love you lots.