Valencia F1!

We arrived a few days ago, just before a really strong patch of wind came through and after having to motor in a 1m swell hitting us in the side the whole way!

We have got a pretty sweet spot with a partial view turn 9/10, the photo shows the view of the bridge looking from the back of our boat. About 100m away there is also a balcony that we have access to with another pretty decent view! The sound is incredible an the atmosphere is great, we have never been in a marina where all of the boats around us have people on them and there all here to have the same fun!

Jack has just landed, Matt is about 30 minutes out and Jim is arriving on a flight from Munich after having to take four others form somewhere in Africa at around 1730!

We did a €400 euro food and drink shop yesterday an have enough wine, rum and steak to immobilise an army!

Should be a great weekend!

Main Land

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while, not really sure why!

We are currently on our way from Ibiza to the mainland on a very calm and windless Sunday morning. It's only about 50Nm and we should be there just after lunch time.

In my last post we had just let a very pleasant Dutch couple raft to us while anchored in Portinax. Having both boats held by our anchor presented no problems at all and we spent most of the evening chatting with them over a few glasses of wine, recounting our various sailing stories! They left for Mallorca early the following morning and were headed from their to Corsica. They had what seemed to be a pretty cool arrangement with the co owners of the boat; they would spend 3 weeks sailing it from the Spanish mainland to Corsica and then the other couple would spend 3 weeks sailing it back!

From Portinax we headed to Formentera, which was very beautiful, we spent 3 nights anchored just off the part of the beach where the Shark Restaurant is on the west side of the island. We never actually ventured ashore to check it out as the reviews online said it was very expensive and you had to book a table well in advance.

The weather started to come in a bit on our third night so we decided to go and check out St. Eulalia and spend a few nights in the marina there to restock and pick up Helly. What was meant to be a short stay ended up being 10 nights due to the still very un settled weather. The town was pleasant enough and had every think you could want, including a great bar with half price cocktails from 5-8pm, but it lacked any real charm. Maybe we have been spoilt by places like Soller and Mahon!

As soon as the weather settled down we headed out to our chosen departure point on the west of the Island and found a great bay called Cala Tarida. Our first nights weather prediction was in the early 20's which meant a few alarms were set to check everything was ok during the night! From then on it went beautifully calm and rather than staying our planned one night we ended up there for three! We also experienced what I think was a small squall; one minute there was 5knts of wind, but we noticed some white caps appearing on the horizon and then all of a sudden we were having 20knt gusts. It only last about 25 minutes and we put it down to one of those strange Med things as the forecast was predicting nothing.

So our Balearics tour is now over and we are making our way to Valencia for the Grand Prix and from there further north to see what France has in store for us!