Fornells is a small fishing village. White-washed houses line small streets, fish restaurants line the waterfront that's also lined with palm trees. It's possible to walk the whole village in under 20 minutes. Development has been kept to a minimum so the town and surrounding areas are unspoilt, quiet and naturally beautiful.

If you didn't know better you would be convinced that the bay was a lake. It's an ideal place for water based activities; windsurfs, paddle boards, kayaks and diving can be done safely in the surroundings of a virtually enclosed bay that has many coves and three small islands, only accessible by boat.


the waterfront

Above the town stands the 'Tour de Fornells', a small defensive watch tower, built at the beginning of the 17th century. From here there are excellent views across the bay and the surrounding area. Hiking is very popular along with jogging, cycling, mountain biking and golf.


view of the bay from the Fornells Tower

Many hours have been spent sat in the cockpit admiring our surroundings as well as sightseeing, partying, swimming, snorkelling and of course watching those around us. We've thoroughly enjoyed watching the marinero who seemed totally incapable of driving anywhere in his RIB other than at full speed!

When we heard our names being shouted out by a couple from the yacht moored opposite, clearly they knew us but we didn't know them. After a few drinks we found out that Dutch couple, Yan and Bea from 'Beeke' met fellow liveaboard Andy, from 'Marique' who we met and became friends with during our time in Portimao. Both have been keeping in touch via email. Andy happened to mention to them that we were cruising somewhere in the Balearics. Who would have thought that we'd end up in the same harbour, literally 100m apart given the hundreds of calas around!

We were graced with the arrival of the largest yacht that we've seen yet, 'Espiriitu Del Xarey'. At 43m and 191 tons she's huge and dwarfed all the yachts around - an amazing sight. She has six cabins and five crew - roughing it like the rest of us - LOL.


the surrounding yachts are 10-12m in length!

When the strong winds arrived all the mooring buoys were taken and the anchorage became busy. Just like hermit crabs, we all hunkered down in our shells waiting for the weather to improve. Whilst waiting patiently we've been looking at the weather forecast in order find a '36-40 hour window' to enable us to cross over to Sardinia some 200 miles to the east of us. Based on current wind and swell forecasts we could be making the crossing on Tuesday. :-)

With all this wind and sunshine our wind generator and solar panels have given us excess amps allowing us to recharge absolutely everything. It goes to show that our solar and windy setup has paid dividends as we haven't had to run the generator at all since our last marina visit some 6-7 weeks ago. It's fair to say that we are very pleased with our work over the past few winters.

From a cruisers point of view Fornells has an excellent, cheap bus service. There are two small supermarkets, a service launderette, priced at 4.50 per kg and two chandlers. Fuel can be purchased from the small marina and if you ask nicely water in jerrycans can be filled ashore, although they would rather you temporarily move from the mooring buoy to the marina to fill up at a charge of €5. Strong winds blowing straight into the entrance didn't cause too much chop or residual swell. Swell-ometer rating 10/10. Excellent.

It would have been very easy to spend weeks here.