Nude days and the perils of dangling on anchor.

Fifteen nights in Mallorca, fourteen on anchor and six different anchorages. But not one nude day so far. Are we doing this sailing thing right?

Deciding to live on a boat and sail around the Med raises a lot of questions. Well before we’d left Australia a good friend asked, “what percentage of your time will you spend in the nude?” It was one of many truly excellent lines of enquiry.

Behind the question was the idea that we’d be so laid back, chilled and in-tune with nature that we’d shed all affectations, inhibitions and clothing quick-time as we all-over-tanned non-stop.

But the answer to the question is, so far, none.

It’s still quite cold and we’re not Wim Hoff ice-bath hardened, northern European naturists.

Plus, and this may come as a surprise, living on a boat and nudity are not easy allies. Too many moving parts on both sides.

As long-time Director of the Australian Ballet, Sir Robert Helpmann, said when asked if he would ever produce a nude ballet, “No, I don’t think so. There are parts of the human body that don’t stop when the music does”.

You get the point.

We’re shedding plenty of layers to be sure, laying back, chilling, loosening our hold on time, and tuning into nature in a big way. Fair to say that nature is the lead protagonist in the story of each and every day. But clothing, yeah, it’s definitely still a thing.

One of the other questions that often comes up a lot is around anchoring. Can you anchor anywhere you want? What about on passages, do you just drop the anchor to sleep in the middle of the ocean?

Coming to grips with all the many physical and psychological challenges of anchoring has been a little, e-hem, challenging. We’d never anchored this boat until we arrived in Mallorca 15 days ago. It was unclear how well the systems would work, or if they’d work at all. Or if our marriage would survive having an anchor at the front of the boat, steering and engines at the back, and only hand signals in between. Is Jo flicking me the bird, or telling me to head up?

Let’s go back a couple of steps and try to unravel the whole idea of anchoring. Not because we’re psychiatrists, but because we’ve been forced to think about this quite a lot recently.

We all like to be attached to things. People, places, ideas and the full raft of sensorial experiences like the smell of fresh Iggy’s bread, a place to call home, and the magic of Queen’s harmonies in the opening of Bohemian Rhapsody - Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? We love making connections.

That’s what anchoring promises every time we drop the hook. A chance to connect with a place and stay put for a while. To ease the buffeting of wind and waves and draw some deep breaths. Talk about over-promising!

To balance the moments of solace and connectedness at anchor we’ve found other moments of high anxiety, reached new highs in our voices (inspired, no doubt, by Freddy and the boys) as we try to communicate over the noise of the wind, waves and the engines, and not experienced this kind of sleep deprivation since having new borns. Some nights we’re both up breastfeeding and nursing the boat in the wee, catastrophising hours between 3am and dawn.

As they say, famously, in The Castle, “How’s the serenity? So much serenity.” Yeah, right.

When the boat is banging around making unfamiliar sounds in the dark the basic physics of anchoring a boat are not hugely reassuring. An anchor the weight of a check-in bag on Emirates is shackled to 25 metres of 10mm chain to hold 11,000kgs of boat in 25 knots of wind with gusts and the waves that come with it.

A 30kg anchor is actually quite chunky for an 11,000kg boat, but it looks so small!

But we’d be fibbing to say we weren’t loving it. Solving the dynamic 3D puzzle that is anchoring is actually all part of cruising life, and it’s the key to visiting some of the most beautiful parts of the Ballearics.

Let’s step through the last 10 days of anchoring around the coastline of Mallorca.

Port de Soller

Leaving port after a rough night on anchor.

This is a big favourite because this is where we anchored with our first special guests, Miki and Charlie. After they left we stayed another night but really should have checked the forecast. We’d been there for three nights already and got a little comfy. The wind was behaving itself but westerly swell arrived from a weather system far away and made for a bumpy, roly-poly night.

Lesson 1 - Always check the swell forecast along with the wind.

Cala en Gossalba

Jo diving on the anchor to check it’s dug into the sand.

The very first anchorage around the northern tip of Mallorca. Steep cliffs fall down both sides of the narrow anchorage with unforgiving rocks everywhere. The anchorage only measures 100m side-to-side, so with 25m of chain out (that’s a 25m swinging radius), there’s little margin for error. Prompted by our anchor alarm set for movement of 15m we were up tending to the baby a couple of times that night. The wind whistled in from the opposite direction the next day and pushed us closer to the rocks. We hemmed-and-hawed for a while but the sounds of the water hitting the rocks now only 20m off our stern made the decision for us.

Lesson 2 - If you start thinking it’s time to move, move.

Cala Murta

The goats are friendly in these parts.

Even prettier and only half a mile south east, Cala Murta is flanked by rocks, nosey goats, pine forests, and has a lovely beach at the head of the bay. We parked up behind a friendly French family who kindly took a photo of us at anchor as the sun went down. We upped anchor and reset it again 10m further south during the night to give us more margin from the rocks as the wind shifted left.

Lesson 3 - Forget sexy. Keep your socks and trackies on for midnight anchoring action.

Puerto de Pollensa

The house from The Night Manager on the shores of Port de Pollensa is rumoured to be the most expensive ‘AirBNB’ in the world. We anchored nearby fo’ free.

A big, broad anchorage with 650 boats in the marina and hundreds more moored and anchored outside. We grabbed a spot with plenty of space around us and a 5 minute dinghy blast into the dock for groceries and fresh bread.

Pollensa is cranking up for summer already with tourist boats and bars blasting out bangas from the nineties to noughties like sirens beckoning sailors to come and get wrecked. We resisted the call and settled in to eat too much manchego, olives and jamon over G&Ts, and watch other people wrestle with their own anchoring decisions. When the odd mariner came too close, we’d usher them away with international body language for “you might be happier elsewhere”.

Pollensa boasts a wide shallow boat friendly bay. Over them hills, the wild west coast of the island.

A tad unfriendly perhaps, but when all the local boats are permanently festooned with fenders (the big plastic balloons and cylinders that hang over the side for crash protection) it tells you that boating in these parts is a contact sport. We want to keep SUNDAY ding free.

Lesson 4 - Eat good cheese whenever you get the chance and beware of kooks on boats.

Cala Molto

Sailing across the top of Mallorca west-to-east brings you to the north eastern corner at Cabo Farrutx. Hang a right into a stiff southerly and soon enough Cala Molto opens up. It’s the quiet, rocky sister to the more boysterous beach next door. And a nudey haven for hardy Germans from the Baltic coast sun-kissing their nether regions. I do wonder about the consequences of overcooking those parts of you made from chicken skin.

The view south from the top of the puig with the mast of SUNDAY just visible far left.

We swam, hiked up the puig banking credits for more Med delights at dinner, and felt quite pleased with how few boats had found this serene spot. As the sun settled on the hills to the west, a flotilla of late arrivals jammed themselves in as close to the beach as possible creating a mosh pit of fibreglass and rope.

Staying in the cheap seats, we watched the entertainment unfold.

Lesson 5 - Beware the sunset crush. Best to stay out a bit and watch the fun from afar.

Playa del Trench

We’re just around the south eastern corner of the island, closing in on our first circumnavigation. We pulled up about 300m off the long sandy beaches around Porto del la Rapita. Miles of room between boats and no sunset crush this time. Perhaps the south east swell had put them off. But we’d checked the swell forecast (see Lesson 1) and could see it easing by early evening.

Boat tidying paused while we entertained the police.

Just as we settled into our post passage clean up routine, a black rib roared up with 6 fully armed popo. Two of them jumped aboard and asked for our boat documents and passports. How did they know about all that manchego? Is is illegal to have so much cheese?

Lesson 6 - Have your ducks in a row with docs to back them up.

Turns out they’re looking for VAT dodgers and visa overstayers. Not guilty, m’lud. Luckily we had the bona fides to prove it. They left satisfied, handed us a copy of the blue form they’d written up about us, and went on their way with a wave.

By the time we went to bed the swell had gone, the last fine sliver of a waning moon had gone behind cloud cover and we swayed gently in the blackest of blacks. It felt like sleeping in a float tank. With the anchor alarm set to a generous 50m we slept, uninterrupted, and I had a disturbing dream about BBQ chicken.

See you next time,

Craig and Jo xxx