Let's go, week one.

After packing up our apartment, putting most of our belongings into storage, a small part into a pile on the boat and the rest we have donated, sold, or gifted. It is now time to leave the safety of the marina and head out.

We're doing the one thing you should avoid at all costs, being on a schedule and trying to make an appointment in Mallorca in a few days.

The route is straightforward enough, head out, pass over the north of Menorca, and cross over to Mallorca to Alcudia, and then get a car to drive for a day to Palma to make our appointment with the US consulent.

The entry to port Mahon is showing it usual rolling self. we bounce around for a good while in big waves, somewhat even bigger than normal but as we finally manage to pass the headland and head towards Es Grau for the night things calm down a bit. Still quite a bit large waves and more wind than all weather forecast was showing earlier.

Our anchor for the night was fantastic right until around midnight were it became a rolly whirlpool of a bay. This was repeated at every stop along the north coast, big waves, rolly anchorages, and all in all not the greatest start to our full-time live-aboard experience.

And day 3 put an interesting twist into all things.

At 5:30 in the morning, after having rolled around all night, we decided it was not worth trying to sleep much longer. And were really happy that we at least had gotten to bed quite early the previous night.

We decided to motor out of our anchorage and a bit far north where we expected some decent winds that would be able to push us pretty much in a straight line past the rest of Menorca and all the way to our destination in Mallorca. About an hour into our passage, the engine slows down and then dies down. We are about 6-800 meters away from the rocky cliffs of the North coast of Menorca. A 30-50 meters high rocky cliff of a wall. The engine turns right back on at the start, but any throttle and again it dies down immediately.

But thankfully we are on a sailboat, so putting up sails and we should be good to continue our journey. In Alcudia, where we are headed, there is a grand big bay where we can put down anchorage and figure out what the engine issue is. Or second option we get as close to Ciutadella on the west coast of Menorca and see if we can put down an anchor there.

Since the wind is more or less directly behind us we try and turn the boat around, but the waves once more this week are not helping. It takes us about 20-30 min in the swell to get the main and headsails up and finally we're back on our way. Thankfully we never get close to land during this time.

With wind in our back and a full set of sails up we set into a lovely sail. We talked about how much better the experience is under sails and take a few pictures to share with family from the sail. The kids are all still fast asleep.

Just then.

About an hour, or even a little less than that after struggling with the engine and getting the main up, the boom breaks off our mast. We quickly drop the main sail and tie it down, along with securing the boom best we can. The headsail is working great and we're just about to clear the west most part of Menorca.

We decide that trying to cross to Mallorca, with no engine and no main, for a 6-hour sailing journey is not worth it so we turn as close we can to Ciutadella.

To get into Ciutadella is a narrow channel directly against the wind, so we have no luck trying to tack our way there. We try a close by bay with similar luck. Can't get close enough to drop the anchor.

We tried to reach out on channel 16 but had no luck in getting a response. We sailed outside the entrance and along the west coast of Menorca for about 4 hours before finally managing to get through the local marina and got confirmation that our messages were received only after having our friend on the island reach out and get in contact with the local rescue service. Another 45 min to an hour and they came out to us and helped tow us into safety.

Finally, we are able to breathe just a little bit more easily, tucked away in the port of Ciutadella. We investigate our issues and end up having to call in a rigger and a mechanic to help re-attach the boom to the mast a couple of cm above the earlier location. As well as finding out that the boat has a fairly extensive diesel bug issue.

Diesel bug

Essentially algae growth in the diesel tank, something that has been growing for a long time and came loose of the tank walls during our rolly, big confused wave action all week. We added a pre-filter that is supposed to catch all the algae coming out of the tank. With the mechanics industrial size pump, we immediately fill up two filters. Makes sense that we were a bit unsuccessful with the built-in air bleeding pump. After the two filters, we seem to have gotten through most of it. So we add a few replacement filters to our kit and call it a day. A new task on the to-do list is to create inspection ports for our diesel tanks so that we can properly clean them.

Man, what a week.

Luckily there was never any immediate danger, we got quite the experience in sailing with the headsail back and forth at the entrance of Ciutadella and the west coast of Menorca. Calling for support on the VHF and learning a tremendous amount about our boat and engine.

If you ever find yourself with any boating-related issues or need supplies in the town of Ciutadella Menorca we can highly recommend talking to Miquel and his team at Nàutica Ponsetí.