GHOST

After sneaking back onto the floating pontoon so that we could drop mum & Celina off nearer to town to catch their flight, fill up with water and do all the laundry we headed back to La Mola bay early in the morning to get everything dry. Unfortunately the continuing stormy weather meant we spent all day putting the washing out then bringing it in again to avoid the various rain showers.

We then set off early the following day before we remained in La Mola bay forever. The rain had already started so we suited up with full wet weather gear - not something we've done since early last year, it takes ages to put all those clothes on!!! The winds were forecast at 20-25knots on the beam and Brad was keen that we get some good heavier weather practice in before the Atlantic and therefore planned to helm the whole trip manually. Soon the winds picked up to the forecast level with some horrific looking clouds and the sea state gradually worsened but GHOST was loving it sailing at between 9.5 and 11.8 knots with one reef in the main and only half the foresail out - the fastest speeds we've clocked this year. What would have been an exhilarating sail was made slightly scary by repeated radio warnings of twister sightings. This meant I spent the whole trip either on the helm which was exhausting given the sea state, or on avid twister watch - definitely not a relaxing sail. The upside is that the unprecedented level of watchfulness did mean that we avoided a large floating raft...

With the speeds we were sailing at we soon reached Mallorca where we caught up with Meander and crew, our new friends from La Mola. We followed them down the coast to anchor in Porto Colom on the east coast which has good shelter from the winds and swell, and we spent the evening chatting over beers. We'll explore the town here before sailing around to Palma later this week to meet friends. We are just praying that the weather improves and this rain has not settled in for the winter!