Written by Mia

What a gorgeous place! it has a crescent bay with a working lighthouse at each side of a relatively narrow opening and even an old stone lighthouse as a reminder of what sailing used to be. One day we walked all the way up to the southern lighthouse Cabo Gross, what a glorious view! And thanks to the fabulous Pontoppidon barnehage in Oslo Teo quite happily walked up the two kilometres to the top of the hill. In fact Teo keeps asking us to hike to the top of the hills around the port. I think he will be enjoying the summers he spends with his uncle Stephen as his parents are pretty useless at hiking.

I think we mentioned the warm welcome we had from Mark and Nikki upon arrival and it has been lovely to be close to friends for the past few weeks – time flies!! They have been really looking after us, spoiling Mia with a day at the spa and lending us tools, their car and support when we need it. We have seen the start of the swimming season and the beach is really starting to fill up during the day, the vibe is very different from when we arrived and I think the water must be getting warmer at the rate of a degree a day. Teo loves the beach and one late afternoon he was playing on the shore and kept walking until he was basically up to his shoulders, giggling the whole time. The other adults on the beach were giggling too. A few days later Jon threatened to go for a swim in the Med before his wife and I think I was in the water about 19 minutes later. Teo took all his clothes off and jumped in too, with only a pool noodle for support. We swam around Itchy Foot a few times before going back on board.

We have split our time between the dock and being on anchor (once without a stern line and later with one). We opted for a marina for the es Firo festival which is a reenactment of when the Christians fought off the Moors at the port, the men were fighting two battles in the port and the boats reenact it. Further up the hill the women showed off their ilk when the defended the town with pitchforks and boiling olive oil! Jon’s parents arrived on the day of the Firo and had a perfect view from their hotel the Espendido. We three pirates descended on them mid afternoon. Check out the separate post of the holiday we had with Jon’s parents :))

We have slowly met our neighbours, getting a glimpse of the hard working charter boat crews and also met a few cruising boats. We were even invited onboard Linea for a boat party in Yorkshire and compared plans with the crews of Comet and Resolute. Hopefully we will be meeting everyone along the way. We were also interviewed for Boat Radio that will possibly be airing on the internet in June some time.

Mark and Nikki took us out on Mezzo Magic for an unforgettable day up the coast, with perfect conditions, a lovely lunch and lots of laughs. They do charters and if you find yourself in Mallorca look them up www.mezzomagic.co.uk We stopped in Smugglers Cove and harvested a bunch of drift wood and saw a baby seagull nested in the rocks, but the mauve stinger medusas kept us out of the water, so we travelled further north to Mushroom Rock. Everyone swam from the boat to the rock – that was quite a distance for Teo and his pool noodle. Later we checked out Cala Turent before sailing back to port. I am going to brag now because I helmed the last hour or so and we had a Spinnaker up. We sailed back into port on the Spinnaker, at sunset and moored on the buoy without the engine, so take that! Now if only we could get a picture of it from any of the hundreds of tourists who photographed us, hee hee…

We are still working on our Itchy Foot to do list, Jon jokes that the latest female member of the family is more high maintenance than his wife even when she was planning for the wedding! Our anchor chain has finally arrived in Palma and we are making our plans to pick it up and how we will get it on the boat, at the moment we are considering yet another use for the blue IKEA bag – well four of them to be more precise! Also, we have had trouble with the water pump and the fridge is crying out for attention and we are still keeping a close eye on the new batteries. Jon is amazing and does the research and maintenance and fixes. And we also found some time for some upkeep, (teak decks need lots of TLC). The whole family worked together and we removed old caulking and replaced it. Our little project of 30 patches took the better part of six hours. Teo never ceases to amaze us with his patience when his parents’ plans take a lot longer than we hoped and his ability to play on his own for a while even if that means every toy comes out of its locker (a small price to pay for a happy kid!) He comes up at regular intervals to see if we need any help and wanders off again down into the saloon when he gets bored. Jon and I feel we hit the jackpot when it comes to awesome kids!

As lovely as it has been here in Puerto de Soller the crew of Itchy Foot are itching to get to Menorca and are watching for good weather for the next step…