Santa Eulària Des Riu
Written by Pieter Jan on Nov 15, 2019 — 3 min read
From: Santa Eulària des Riu, Ibiza, Spain
To: Es Jondal bay, Ibiza, Spain
I take back what I said about Ibiza being dead as a dodo in winter. We visited Santa Eulària Des Riu, once in the evening and once during the day, and it was very much alive. Lovely town, with charming little plazas, shops, restaurants and bakeries. They obviously make a lot of money from tourism and invest it all back in improving the city. The place is clean and well-kept and all the fountains look brand new.
Today was a nice and sunny autumn day. We climbed the hill overlooking the town and were rewarded with a beautiful view of the bay and the countryside. On top of the hill is a 450 year old church with a huge golden altar and a cemetary. Dead people always get the best view.
We went to eat tapas, cut the kids loose in a playground, went to a toy store, got provisions and comfy slippers for those cold mornings, went back to the boat and filled the diesel tanks. We felt very productive. Then again it wasn’t hard to feel productive compared to the gray and rainy day before, when we cocooned on the boat all day.
Making good use of our momentum, we left the bay at sunset and sailed past Eivissa, through the shallow pass between Ibiza and the tiny Illa des Penjats. We wanted to shave 10 miles off of the crossing the next day.
I had selected a small bay east of Punta des Jondal. When we arrived, there was one catamaran anchored smack in the middle of the bay, exactly on the spot where we wanted to anchor. They were watching tv at their ease, while we tried anchoring all around them. The swell and the bottom were not helping. Our anchor didn’t set and the only time it took hold we felt we were too close to the other boat.
We left to try our luck in the next bay, west of Punta des Jondal. That bay was full of buoys. Yellow ones with flashing lights, buoys with signs prohibiting anchoring, and — fortuitously — some mooring balls as well. We selected a nice fat one. While I tried to keep Vite & Rêves in the same place, Barbara was laying on the trampolines, playing thread the needle with a mooring line (line that ties the boat to something solid)and the ring on top of the buoy. Difficulty level: dark, windy and swelly. After a few tries, we got it.