Formentera

Today we sailed down from Ibiza to Formentera again. The sail was great with good winds and calm seas. Unfortunately the weather has not been great, the sky has been grey and it has rained a little. We did, however, see a water spout form for the first time ever! It only lasted for a few mins but it was awesome and far enough away that we did not have to worry about it hitting us.

We have a mooring and are currently in town for dinner and a walk. We will spend the morning in Formentera and then head up to Palma again.

Hope everyone is well at home.

Arti and Dimitri

San Antonio - Ibiza

We anchored outside San Antonio for a couple of days while waiting for Alex, Rochelle and their friends Alicia and Roger. They arrived yesterday and we had a great mohito by while watching the sunset (and watching people watch the sunset, as it is the thing to do at cafe de mar).

After a swim off the boat we had dinner at a beachside cafe.

We will spend the night at anchor here and tomorrow we will sail down to Formentera for a day and one night.

Arti & Dimitri.

Sunset at club de mar

Formentera

Hi Guys, hope all is well with you.

We are now on the island of Formentera, just south of Ibiza. There are two main islands here, Formentera and a little one called S'Espalmador. We spent one day anchored off S'Espalmador. It is a private island, with only the owner's house on it. However, there are buoys in the bay which one can use and the owners allow yachtsmen to use the beach and wander around the island. A favorite is to go to a little lake in the centre which has a lot of mud which people wallow in and cover themselves in, believing that it is good for the skin. The result is people walking around on the beach, covered in black mud! It certainly looks weird. We then moved to Isla Formentera and will remain here, in various bays for the next few days. It is the most unspoilt place we have seen in Spain. There is no high-rise, traditional looking houses, stone walls around the fields, fig trees and the water is crystal clear. There are restrictions on where one can anchor and mooring buoys have been laid in sensitive areas. The water is crystal clear and all the sea grasses and fish are clearly visible. Yesterday we took a drive around the island. We watched with interest from the comfort of a seaside restaurant as a tug struggled to re-float a yacht which had been on the rocks for two weeks, since the last Tramontana (strong wind from the north, which we experienced with Heidi and Tony two weeks ago). The mast had been removed and the boat emptied. We arrived at the critical time and I am happy to say that after a lot of pulling and dragging it around, they were successful. The back seemed to be low in the water once it was floated, so I am sure it was taking water, but hopefully they managed to get it to Ibiza with pumps going. There is a small mountain on the island and from the top the view is spectacular. There is also a small village up there with a traditional hippie market on a Wednesday. I could not believe the amount of traffic heading up there for the market as we were heading down. It was a good thing we arrived there early. Formentera is becoming very popular now that the likes of Naomi Campbell and Leonardo di Caprio have spent time on the beach here. Yesterday there was a medium-sized ship anchored just nearby called "Prince Abdul Aziz", owned by a Saudi Prince. I cannot begin to understand why anyone would want an 8-storey ship as a private vessel! Here I had been thinking that the 150ft. superyachts were way over the top.....

Drop us a line sometime. Our land email: dimitridemetriou is still operational and we get the messages every two days or so. You can also reply via Alex: alex_atm email if you wish. We enjoy getting news from home. (If you don't have either of these email addresses please make a comment on the blog and Alex will get back to you. We don't want to list them online or we will get spam)

It is 4.30am here so back to bed for me.

Arti and Dimitri.

Formentera - S'Espalmador

We have sailed from San Antonio to S'Espalmador, just north of the island of Formentera We anchored off the beach. This is a private island with only one house, but they allow the boating community to use the beach and walk around the island. This evening we were told to move because of sea grass so we have moved to the northern spit of Formentera. Found a problem with the spurling pipe pulling loose yesterday, so that was the day's entertainment.

Arti and Dimitri

San Antonio - Ibiza

Hello Everyone, 

I have been very slack with contact and you must be wondering what has happened to us. Yes, we are still OK with no mishaps. 

Over the last two months, we slowly worked our way up the Spanish coast, stopping off in Cartagena and Valencia and several small anchorages in between. We have spent quite a lot of time in Barcelona which we really got to like. It is very bike friendly and we did quite a bit of cycling around the place to all the sights. When H and her family arrived, we took a cruise on a BIG ship, to Corfu, Santorini and Mykonos. We really enjoyed the week with the kids and a ship that did not rock. H and the boys joined us on the yacht in Mallorca for two weeks but as two of them got very sea-sick, they checked into a beachside hotel and we anchored just offshore. That way we still got to spend the days together. 

Mallorca is a very pretty island, with some mountains in the north. We enjoyed sailing the coast and looking up at the sheer cliffs. We spent a few days in the lovely village of Soller on the north coast. It is a fishing village, surrounded by an amphitheatre of high mountains. From there, it was back to Barcelona to do a repair on our forestay which had started coming apart and also to pick up our next lot of guests, T and H. 

We sailed back to Mallorca with them and spent an enjoyable time sightseeing and sailing to various quieter spots. I say quieter as the whole of France and Spain seem to have their boats in the Balearic Islands. From there we came to Ibiza and spent two days sightseeing before T and H left. Ibiza is a very pretty little island with some high-rise hotels on the coast, but not nearly as many as the Spanish mainland coast which is spoilt by wall- to- wall 10 storey hotels for package tourists along every beach. The interior of Ibiza is mostly empty with only a few very small villages and is covered in pine forest. There are some high hills but not high mountains like the north coast of Mallorca. The disappointing thing about Spain for me is that it does not LOOK Spanish! Funnily enough, Ibiza looks more like a Greek island than anything else. The architecture in Portugal and especially the houses in Madeira looked much more Spanish than Spain does! Anyway, the people here are lovely (especially the young guys with their six-packs! )

We are looking forward to seeing the next lot of guests in two weeks and also our next trip to Morocco. We will be going further south so will not retrace our steps in the north that we saw with Jan and Nick, which is good. Before then, we plan on a lot of work on the boat. I am finally going to get the sander out and re-do the woodwork. We are in San Antonio on the west coast of Ibiza at the moment. Unfortunately it is a lower-class version of our Kings Cross and is very tacky. It is full of English package tourists and the riff-raff of Europe, complete with regulation tattoos, nose rings and face and body paint to match their extremely skimpy outfits. 

We plan to move on to the island of Formentara where, we are told, it is quiet and the water is crystal clear. Did I mention our change of plan with the boat? We have found a shipyard in Barcelona, where we had our repair done, who will put our boat on the hard for the same price as the place in France. That will save us marina fees while we are in Morocco and also save us the two day trip to France. As I had already booked our return to Sydney via Marseilles and Paris we will stick to that. So now I have booked us a flight from Barcelona to Marseilles and we get to spend a few days there which will be good as neither of us have been to Marseilles before. 

We will be home on 22nd September so we look forward to seeing you all (our Australian friends, that is), then.

Cheers for now.

Dimitri and Arti.

Dinner on the neighbors boat

Dimitri having dinner on the beach in San Antonio