We came into S’Espalmador in the small hours, dropping anchor by
moonlight off a beach so white it seemed to glow on its own account, and
I will admit that for a night or two this crossing to the Balearics felt
like the kind of arrival a ship’s spirit remembers fondly for a
century or so. Nobody in a hurry to leave. Water the color you don’t
quite believe from photographs. Tobi and Jo off to Formentera for
groceries and, memorably, a replacement VHF antenna, since apparently
even radios fail out here and not only autopilots.
Cala Talamanca, a few days later, was a rather ruder welcome: a
horribly rolly anchorage, and worse for our neighbors Siggi and Kati
aboard Kasibu, whose outboard was lifted clean off the stern pushpit
overnight while everyone slept. I take a dim view of theft at anchor. A
harbor is meant to be a kind of truce, and whoever did the lifting broke
it for every boat in the bay that night, not just the one they robbed.
I could not have stopped it. Invisible does not mean omniscient, and I
was minding our own lines, not theirs. But I would have liked the
chance to try.
