Hello from Mallorca

[linnetwoods]

Hello cruisers! My name is Linnet and I have been living aboard the schooner Leopard Normand III since 1996 with Keith 'Robbie' Robinson, otherwise known as Captain Quite-Right. Currently we are in Illetas, Mallorca, where the sun is blazing and you couldn't get another boat into this bay without a shoehorn...
Will come back soon and read all about everyone but, right now, I must away and do some unavoidable chores (lifting a wine glass, manipulating a fork...)
Great to have found this place and I look forward to seeing everyone soon. Cheers!

[MarkJ]

Welcome aboard Linnet!

We'll be in the Med in a year or so


Mark

[bassman1956]

Ooooh, I'm so jealous! Hit Palma several times when in the USN, first in the summer of '77, then over the winter of '78-'79. Beautiful place, dying to go back! Enjoy the times!

[linnetwoods]

The name of the game is enjoyment! The anchorage we are in at the moment is getting more crowded by the minute. In some places, and under some circumstances, that can be dreadful but, actually, there's a sort of party feeling this weekend - perhaps it has something to do with the summer solstice or maybe it's the fact that the heat is searing and it's a relief after a very rainy start to the season. We have been coming to this bay for years and for increasingly long periods and the locals seem to have come to view us as a part of the landscape, like another rocky outcrop or something - they always wave as they come and go, shouting pleasantries (luckily I speak fluent Spanish and Captain Quite-Right can manage) about the weather. It's lovely!

About ten minutes ago, we were very flattered when a local chap with two children on board asked if he could leave his tender with us for three hours as he wanted to go sailing unencumbered. That's what I call acceptance! It makes a change from last year, when a Frenchman on a sloop snuck over and untied a dinghy and outboard (which was on loan to us!) from the back of our boat, making off with it tied to the back of his yacht next to his own dinghy, in broad daylight!

With the help of a local official who happened to be anchored nearby in a large and fast rib, fishing with his children, the sloop was pursued and the dinghy recovered, thank goodness. Never a dull moment in Mallorca! Still, it isn't the cheapest place for shopping and the nearest marina to us, Puerto Portals is, apparently, the fifth most expensive in the world so there's no way we could consider moving into it if the weather gets rough. Instead, people come down to the shore to take photographs of us being flung about on the waves crashing into the bay... We don't mind and we don't really worry. With a 97 kilo CQR and 80 metres of 12mm chain down and two standby anchors in case of emergencies, we tend to be reasonably relaxed in winter and we bring about half of it back onboard in summer, so as not to get in everyone's way.

We have to leave Spanish waters occasionally to stay within legal stay limits and we end up going off to all sorts of interesting places nearby - Algiers, for example - most of which, however interesting, are probably not to be recommended for various reasons...

Well. that's quite enough about me and mine, I must go and roam the forum, I've been longing to see what everyone else is up to... Cheers!

[Hud3]

Welcome to Cruisers Forum, Linnet.

Good to have you here--hope you find it interesting and informative. We'd love to hear more about your experiences in the Med .

p.s. might pretty boat you have! (I pinched the photo from your website!)

[linnetwoods]

Thank you, kind sir! She is a beauty, isn't she? The sails you see there are all manner of second-hand emergency stand-ins and she has since had new sails made, some of which are still looking half-way decent... That upside-down ex-mainsail, for example, acting as a triatic, has been replaced with a purpose-built upside-down mainsail, as it worked so much better than the rhomboid 'gollywobbler' or 'fisherman' that was replaced temporarily with the one you see in the photo, after it blew out in the Canary Islands, aged 26... It used to make the boat move faster but with a terrifying sort of tremble that always gave me the sensation the boat might implode at any moment. When it finally blew out irreparably, Captain Quite-Right's lip wobbled but I let out a whoop of joy...

[henryk]

Lucky you Linn!.I lived in Spain for a year when I was in my twenties ,north of Madrid in a little town Manzanares El Real . That was the best time of my life , and the language ,the easiest to learn . But you are right, the Spanish people are the best in the world ,they really know how to live the life .It looks like in the nearby future I will go there on my own keel.
Regards ,Henryk (former Enrique)

[linnetwoods]

Nice to meet you Henryk/Enrique!
Good to hear you plan to visit Spain again and with your own keel underneath you - it has changed a lot in many ways but in others it is just the same. Mallorquins are still fiercely determined to remain Catalan. A good example is the enquiry that has been going on in the bay today. Two young people in an official government dinghy have been round asking us all to fill in a questionnaire about crowding/overcrowding in the bay. The form was available in only two languages: Catalan and English!

Most of the Spanish boat owners here can read and write in Catalan but not all, some are mainlanders who have migrated to the islands and they were quite bemused by the fact that the form was not available in a language they could understand! Sinister questionnaire though, especially as I have been giving these matters a lot of thought lately and am working on a relevant idea in my spare time... too early to describe, though!

Anyway, there are still plenty of great places to visit around all of Spain. Maybe we'll bump into each other some time! We are thinking about visiting all the family in their new holiday home in Croatia, this summer, if we can get paperwork done etc., but we will certainly come back to Spain again, wherever we go. Hasta luego!

[Robertcateran]

Haven't been there since 1956. I hear it has changed. My grandfather retired to Deya there on a war pension from the first world war in order to write and brought up his 2nd family there. I still have lots of family around there and maybe one day I will go back and have a look, but I think I would probably prefer to keep the memories of what it was like back then: the fisherman mending there nets on the beach next to their sailing boats, the magical Spanish omelets, walking down the cliffs to the little coves through the olive groves, our donkey Isabella, addicted to tobacco who lived next door to the dunny and kicked the wall violently whenever any one had a crap . My grandfather had the only car in the village back then. No, you can never go back, (unless the price of oil goes up enough and you are one of the rich ones)
Robert

[scallywag]

Linnetwoods,
Welcome to the forum. Wish you fairwinds.
John

[linnetwoods]

Hello, Robert Cateran and Scallywag and everyone else, of course! Mallorca has, in parts, changed drastically. Mainly in the parts you mention, unfortunately, although fishermen still have to mend their nets they are not allowed to do it on most of the beaches and there has been a great deal of development, not all of it particularly wonderful... Still, if you visit it as though it were a new country, there's a lot to recommend it. Must dash, I'm on a deadline but I will be back very soon... Fair winds and following seas to anyone going sailing.. We've dragged a little, I think but that's all the moving we'll get to do this week, I fear :-)

[SkiprJohn]

Aloha Linnet,
I too, like Bassman, was in Palma aboard a USN vessel but in the mid 80s. It was a great place and looked to be very nice for mooring.
It appears you've got a wonderful vessel. Congratulations on living life.
Kind regards,
JohnL

[linnetwoods]

Thank you, SkiprJohn! Every now and again, to this day, there is much hooting of ship's horns and an aircraft carrier or other large vessel from the states comes into the bay. Stern warnings are issued not to go near in any vessel and Palma fills up with cheerful American sailors for a few days...

Actually, some of the changes here are a little worrying to liveaboard sailors - the buoying off of safe bays and the charging of large amounts of money even if one anchors, plus being limited to less than five days has started and the idea I mentioned I was working on, earlier in this thread, has just been launched as a website: Free Sea Pass - we have just started trying to lobby the European Parliament to create a special pass for permanent liveaboards to be able to pay less (or not at all) and stay longer. We need as much support as we can get, even from non-liveaboards, to get anywhere, so please feel free to become a member, whatever your situation!