The Mediterranean

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Year two

Year three

Cycle tour

We set sail from Lagos marina on the 25th of April 2001 and sailed all of 8 miles to Portimao. The mouth of the River Arade provides a safe, natural harbor and is a nice little anchorage where we settled down for our first night away from the livaboard community we had been with for the past few months. It is always a bit lonely to begin with, and takes a few days to settle back into the routine of cruising.

As we continue along the eastern Algarve of Portugal we enter the Guardiana River, the natural boundary between Portugal and Spain. We spent a week here just walking and exploring this wonderful area, it was quiet and the wild plants were blooming.
Upon leaving the river we entered southern Spain.

We were charmed by Cádiz; the oldest existing city in Western Europe is home to many beautiful and historic monuments and attractions. The city is located on a peninsula protruding into the Bay of Cádiz and the very high thick walls surrounding it, from the sea present a very picturesque appearance. It is home to some of Spain's most beautiful beaches. Its narrow streets and little parks were lovely, and we loved watching the families out in the evenings promenading.

Gibraltar was next, we got the time and tide just right and cruised through the straights at 9 knots over the ground.(for you non sailing types that's pretty fast) The rock of Gibraltar is a Jurassic limestone that was nicknamed the pillar of Hercules. It contains many miles of tunneled roads, most of which are operated by the military. Most of its upper area is covered by a nature reserve, which is home to around 250 Barbary Macaques, the only wild monkeys found in Europe. We spent a few days exploring the tunnels, escorted by the monkeys; the sea gulls attacked us when we wandered into their nesting area. There was a lovely botanical garden in town. We enjoyed the rock although the marina left something to be desire, so we moved around the corner and anchored in La Linear.

Upon leaving Gibraltar the sea was very confused so we had an extremely rough ride around Gibraltar Point and into the Mediterranean Sea. We called into Duquesa a very nice little Spanish town where Jeff met up with Susie a close friend from the old days. She is married to a Spaniard who owns a small bar. So we spent a couple of days catching up on the good old days and boosting the bar profits.

The southern coast of Spain was great, we enjoyed it immensely although the discos on the beaches gave us a few sleepless nights. We crossed over to the Balearic Islands from a small town called Moravra with our cruising friends Doug and Carole on Rival Romance. We spent 3 weeks sailing around Ibiza, finding some lovely anchorages. We were rather embarrassed one day when we were snorkeling from the boat and ended up swimming into a nudist area, we saw some new kinds of sea life that day I can tell you.

Mallorca was next, we cruised into Palma and found it very expensive so we cruised out again, and found somewhere just as nice at half the price (I made a poem) We spent a lot of time in Pollensa Bay on the north side of the island. It's a big shallow bay that's well protected, complete with a few livaboards who were well dug in and intending to spend the winter. The town was great. We had a visit from Paul Jeff's son who joined us for a fun week.

It was now October and time to start thinking about heading to our winter destination. We were tempted to stay in the Bay with our new friends but decided since we had a reservation in Barcelona we would go there. The decision was the right one because a devastating hurricane force storm blew in that winter and sank a lot of boats around the islands including some of our friends in the Bay.