We have officially departed France! Sally and I spent the better part of the last 18 months in Port Camargue getting the boat and ourselves ready for crossing the Atlantic. In that time we made several friends and grew fond of the area. During the roughly 6 weeks we were there between late August and early October we were very busy.  We hiked a small mountain we had been gazing at from the harbor, Pic St Loup.  We sewed and assembled a 150-cone series drogue, a sea anchor designed to slow the boat down if necessary.  Dave applied a non-skid product called Kiwi Grip on our salon roof, drastically improving the nonskid on that curved surface.  We spent a few days chopping up the foam from inside the old ugly orange pfds that came with the boat and creating 2 new lounging pillows.  Near our slip we watched a French racing crew tip their boat over almost 90 degrees to clean the hull in preparation for the Route de Rhum sailing race, from France to the Caribbean Island of Guadelupe; crazy French sailors!  John-Marie and Sylvie on our neighboring boat Galopin gave us a going away party in combination with a birthday celebration for our other neighbor Guy in the boat on the opposite side of us.  A fun evening for all.  Both of us will miss the area and the people, but it was time to go!

On October 8 we began our 36-hour crossing to Mallorca… it was “interesting”. The first 12 hours was an awesome easy downwind run with the code D. Then the angle got too deep for the code D so we put it away just before dark and continued with the (new) full Main. We had a light forecast so no big deal…. yea right. About 3am I’m taking a nap and the wind drops to nothing then goes to 20 kts from the other side of the boat! Backwinds the main and slams the preventer…bit of a fire drill, rain squalls etc. Dave wakes up, dives back into his gear and we go to reef 2 and then sail around in circles following the wind while the squall passes. Meanwhile it is raining harder than either of us can ever remember being outside in. We started out from France in shorts and arrived in Mallorca in full Musto Gear and tuffs… thunder, lightning, water spouts, dolphins, whales (the little Mediterranean kind). Then even though we know better and tried to avoid it, we arrived at a new place in the dark in really hard rain with next to no visibility, except for during lightning. With the help of electronic charts and a spotlight we successfully anchored in a sheltered spot out in front of Bonaire – Cocodrilo Marina, Pollenca Bay on the North end of Mallorca, and stayed there for a few days to dry out and recover.

I am not a fan of lighting. We had enough strikes in the area that we could smell the ozone in the air and at times the upper level lightning lit up the entire sky on all sides of us. We were close enough that the compass on the auto pilot was occasionally veering off course for a few minutes on several different occasions. We had purchased a “spare” mast top wind instrument and installed it the previous weekend. It died three days later about 15nm from the cove. Irritating, and while it died it messed up the comms on the NKE buss so the autopilot and lots of other stuff we like was unavailable for a bit.

After resting up we wanted to get our wind info back so I went up the mast to reinstall the original sensor. We were at anchor, light wind and only small waves. Well those small waves were directly on our side and translated into a lot more movement than I wanted for the trip up. When I was about 10 feet above the spreader I was getting tossed around so much that the wind instrument got shaken out of my tool bag. Miraculously it landed on the spreader. Sally shouted a warning since I was busy getting  tossed about in the rigging. The wind instrument actually stayed there long enough for me to drop back down and grab it, undamaged – amazing!  This was Thursday and we wanted to be able to mail out the failed instrument as soon as possible. Friday morning Google maps helped us make our way to the nearest “Oficina de Correos” (Spanish for Post office). The sign on the door said it should be “Open”; locked door and no lights said otherwise. We wandered around for a bit then found a Tabac shop that was a UPS package pick up. They told us that it was some kind of Spanish holiday and all the post offices were closed…but strangely they would be open on Saturday?.

Over the next 2 days we moved to the south end of the island in preparation for some bad weather. Day 2 was a 64-mile day that ended with about 30 kts of breeze at our back surfing at as much as 13 kts, completely under control and comfortable.  Go Wally go! We are now tied up in Club Nautic Arenal at the southern end of Mallorca.The biggest negative to many harbors in the Med (other than cost) is surge. Wind and surge often combine to make the bad weather harbor stay a jerky bouncy experience. We are planning to rent a car and do some land exploring until the weather improves.