October En España
I’m fitting in a whole month here, so apologies for the long blog and video!
Corsica to Castellon de la Plana, Spain, was one of our longest sails to date. We had a beautiful full moon to light the nights and after some dancing on deck, Mexican train and lots of eating, and a 4 hour watch schedule between Gus, Russ and I, we made it! Castellon is a little metropolis on the southeast coast. The tourists are mostly Spanish and the town was historic and the beaches stretched on for miles. Not many English speakers to be found but we did find a Claire’s, so Jordan got an ear pierced. It was a great place to walk with excellent bike paths, parks and boardwalks. Dinner doesn’t start until 8:30 but the paella was plentiful.
We spent a week in Castellon getting a new 17.5kw generator. The 19kw was dead, we were living on the 9kw, which was okay in October but untenable in hot weather. The new generator had to be installed with a shore crane. I kept the kids busy off the boat because there is no stress like a boat in pieces. Today when you start your car, say a little prayer of thanks, because this is where boat life and land life differ: our new generator is also a little bit broken (and still broken at the time of writing this 2 months later). The fix-it list gets longer.
We did a quick hop to Valencia to see our friends on SV Curious and we’re glad we didn’t miss the city. We could have spent days there, but better one quick day seeing the sites and buying some fall clothes than nothing at all.
From Valencia we did another overnight sail to Mallorca because we did not want to miss the Balearic Islands. Our good friend, Jose Luis, met us there and spent two nights with us in Palma de Mallorca. We took the wooden train to Soller, a coastal town, for the day, ate delicious food, and he completely spoiled the kids shopping in El Corte Ingles. We missed you, Sarah!
Palma was epic in that we met four other kid boats all at once. Every single boat had an 11-year-old girl on board and at least one boy. Rosie was in absolute heaven and Jordan was busier socially than he’s ever been. There was a mom-daughter shopping trip in Palma and two nights of meet ups at the park and beach. There were serious 11-year-old tears when it was time to say goodbye. *We also met up with a lovely German family we befriended in Portugal in 2022. They were in Mallorca as part of their year of world-schooling, so it was exciting to connect again!
Ibiza was our next stop and we didn’t get enough time to do justice to this pretty island. Russ and I celebrated our 15th anniversary there after a quick overnight stop at a beautiful swimming area on the way. Ibiza is much more than it’s club reputation, with a historic town and nice beaches, but the real highlight was Formentara, just a quick hop down the island chain. It was there we ran into our friends on Sapphire Blue, whom we first met in Albania and hadn’t seen since! We convinced them to move to our anchorage and it was a fun reunion after many months.
The little island at the north of Formentara is one of my all-time favorites. A practically secluded beach, white sand and shallow ponds ring a perfect mound of earth where we spent a day. It seems like everyday would be a beach day in this life, but that isn’t true. Keeping the boat running, moving from place to place, provisioning, cleaning, homeschooling and general life stuff means we have to make a point to take a beach day. And when we do, it is glorious.
But we are on a schedule: the fix-it schedule of never-ending projects. We had to do another multi-night sail (who’s counting at this point?) to get to Cartagena, our last stop before Gibraltar. Cartagena is so pretty with its tiled streets, cute shops and tapas bars. The port is industrial but it’s a walking town with an Ikea and Decathlon (!!) and in the marina were two other kid boats along with our Aussie friends on Miraflores. Jordan made a close friend in Loralei and Rosie with her older sister. An Israeli boat, SV Sapir, with three young girls aboard, rounded out our friend group.
After three weeks zigzaging around Spain and the Balearics, we moved on to Gibraltar (technically the Spanish side) as we worked our way out of the Mediterranean. Spain is truly la terra bonita. The Spanish know how to eat, live and love, y nos encantó.
