The day has finally arrived for our visit to Cabrera! We're feeling excited however with strong winds predicted for the next 24 hours all thoughts of visiting a calm and tranquil bay have gone out of the window.

Bruce had a mid-morning dip and concluded that it wasn't necessary to set a trip line on the anchor because it had dislodged itself from the rock on the seabed. Earlier we had heard rumbling and felt the slightest of shudders which did make us wonder.

By early afternoon we had quite a breeze so it didn't take us long to actually sail from Sant Jordi to Cabrera. With no mainsail, a reduced genoa and winds gusting to F6 we had spray blowing over the decks which made for an exhilarating ride. A nice change from motoring.

The archipelago of Cabrera is a National Park and restricted zone. The island may only be visited by applying for a permit (valid for a year) and by making a mooring reservation online within a 20 day window. It's popular so book ahead - we booked 14 days ago for a 12m buoy for two nights costing us €16 per night. If we were feeling flush or short on time we could have visited the next day by reserving a 20m buoy for the sum of €133! The permit and reservations can be made and cancelled online at 'permits for anchoring, diving and sailing - PARC NACIONAL MARÍTIMOTERRESTRE DE L'ARXIPÈLAG DE CABRERA'.

The entrance opens up to a beautiful sheltered bay where there are 50 mooring buoys, colour dependent on boat size. You should have seen us trying to pick up our white buoy with the gusts coming down from the surrounding hills. It took five attempts before we succeeded... five! Using the boat hook was futile as the bow kept being blown off and I couldn't reach down far enough. Bruce couldn't hear me and I couldn't hear him. Lassoing was the answer and gave us time for a breather before finally tying to the buoy proper. Our five attempts made us think about better solutions so it was quite a relief to see that we weren't the only one having issues. In fact our attempts were insignificant compared to others, we did pretty well considering.

Total distance this season: 757.06 miles