Trapped by the GWulf of Leon... I'll blow and I'll blow and I'll blow your house down!

Many cruisers spoke highly of Fornells on the north coast of Menorca, both the picturesque fishing village and the large natural cala - we were not disappointed. The narrow entrance opens into an enormous picturesque cala, both deep and wide, the village lies on the west side. Arriving here after our roller-coaster ride with the dinghy, it was wonderful to find yet more newly laid mooring fields with plenty of the buoys still vacant. The upmarket village is quite individual, all of its buildings painted white with dark green shutters and front doors. It is best known for its speciality 'Caldereta de llagosta' (lobster stew), and King Juan Carlos is reputed to sail his yacht here from Mallorca, just to eat in the waterfront seafood restaurants.

It was a pleasantly peaceful place at first; beautiful surroundings and a quaint sleepy village. 'Whoosh' was here too and we enjoyed spending more time with Jack and Patricia. We wrote home, spent time studying the Italian pilot, reading up on Sardinia and Sicily. Jack and Patricia tried to sell 'over-wintering in Turkey' to us, while we attempted to sell Malta to them. With the security of a mooring it was a great place to explore from and we took the bus to Ciutadella. Once the islands capital, Ciutadella is a beautiful town with, in our opinion, much more to offer than Mahon. While visiting Ciutadella, we incredibly bumped in to Tom Kelly, a friend and old colleague from our former life, on holiday with his wife Elizabeth and children Esme and Amy. They came to Fornells a few days later to spend the day with us aboard Hitrapia. We enjoyed entertaining them, catching up and showing them our home and how we now live. The girls enjoyed swimming from the boat and the dinghy rides to and from the anchorage, well at least we think they did, they bravely got very wet as the weather was starting to turn and the sea was a little choppy that day! That sums up our first week in Fornells and the seven days we were there out of choice; the final day of our uninterrupted three weeks and three days of blissful Mediterranean cruising. That night, we sadly became seriously stormbound and remained there for a total of twenty-one days.

The wind strength grew gradually during the evening and by midnight things were getting pretty serious, we thought it ironic that the wind should be blowing directly through the cala's narrow entrance, just a few degrees of choice out of 360! Above the howling wind we began to hear shouts through the darkness. It wasn't long before we became aware of the crew aboard a yacht in the mooring field shouting and flashing torches towards another yacht ahead of them. With our searchlight, now searching with theirs, we began to realise what all the commotion related to. A large black shape was making its way through the anchorage like a drunk in a crowded bar. A dredger - its mooring snapped, no longer able to withstand its load in the gale force winds. The screaming, shouting and flashing torches were coming from the crew of a French yacht, desperately trying to attract the attention of the owners of the next yacht in the dredger's path. They took a huge risk by getting into their dinghy, which could easily have been up-turned in the conditions, to board the unresponsive boat, but it was no use, the owner's could not have been aboard. Feeling 'weak-kneed' and sick we did all we could to help, blasting our fog horn to warn others. While watching, yet another yacht slipped its mooring to escape the drunken steel monster. We were thankful it would pass us on our port side. We assumed the dredger had been too heavy for the mooring but within the next few minutes, the yacht on our starboard side, a similar size to us, suddenly let go too and began rapidly moving backwards, its buoy clearly visible still attached to the bow. Frantically waving our searchlight, shouting and blowing our horn, we successfully aroused the owners and a naked body appeared in the cockpit to start the engine. The gale continued to scream all night, our instruments recorded 46 knots, 'Whoosh's' AirX (an early model without a break) screamed like a tortured cat and at dawn we saw it had lost its nose cone. We both remained in the cockpit, sitting a watch for an hour each, while the other dozed; the engine key ready to turn, wondering when our mooring might say 'enough is enough!'.

At daybreak, the harbour authorities were out attending to yachts in trouble. Refloating those that had run aground and towing them back to safety. Yachts unable to re-anchor had motored all night until running out of fuel. The winds didn't drop below 30 knots for the next 48 hours and having lost some confidence in the moorings we continually sat an anchor watch. As at anchor, our rule is to usually sit a watch system in anything over 30 knots. What we didn't realise at this time, was that this was pretty much going to be our way of life for the next two weeks! Just five days later another severe gale hammered us with 50 knot winds yet again. We were aboard 'Whoosh' when it hit. Noticing the sky blackening in the distance just after dinner, we then began to see lightening bolts. The wind strength rose extremely quickly and within no time at all both our dinghies, with the outboards attached, were air-borne streaming from 'Whoosh's' stern. It was an uncomfortable feeling watching Hitrapia being tossed around from another boat and seemed unfair that she should be suffering alone. With still some uncertainty about the moorings, we decided to attempt getting back to her. The sea now resembled giant, stiffly forked meringue curls. Jack and Patricia gave us their lifejackets to wear, a little concerned for our safety and worried that our 2.2hp outboard engine would not have the strength to punch the conditions. Jack held our dinghy as best he could in the shelter of 'Whoosh's' stern, giving us a chance to jump aboard, before we pushed away quickly to prevent being smashed into her windvane. With our breath snatched away by the wind, Angie braced her bodyweight forwards to try to prevent us from being flipped, while Wayne ploughed full throttle towards Hitrapia. Wobbly with adrenaline, soaked to the skin and spluttering salt water, we arrived at the other end, smashing into Hitrapia's hull with just one chance of grabbing a hold. Thanks to our low freeboard we boarded with relative ease and were soon stripped of our dripping clothes and happy to be back with our home. If it had been further than fifty feet we doubt we'd have made it. Our spectators Jack and Patricia still find it difficult to believe that our outboard engine got us there, we're just thankful it was a short ride to endure. Once the worst of the storm had passed the wind again blew 25-30 knots all night.

The following nine days were a similar story, each day not knowing what the weather gods would deliver. Calm for a few hours, sometimes a day, then howling and tossing us around again the next. The port authorities had divers check and/or repair every one of the laid moorings and after what we'd experienced, we had quite a lot of confidence in mooring no.42. Studying the weather became extremely frustrating as we searched daily for a two-day window for our crossing to Sardinia. When the weather was settled enough for us to leave Menorca the GWulf of Genoa would be huffing and puffing F9's across Corsica and Sardinia and vice versa. As you can imagine, we got very bored of the selection of food available in the two small supermarkets and couldn't even treat ourselves to a slap-up meal in a restaurant, as Wayne is allergic to seafood! Conditions as they were, our wind generator and solar panel kept our battery bank more than happy. We 'Jerry' canned water from the village drinking water fountain and used the village laundry service, although it was expensive. On the positive side we felt fortunate to have been stormbound in a very protected bay (in these severe gales from the northern quadrants the narrow entrance dispersed the breaking seas) and not incurring any mooring fees.

Next Page > Italian adventures await.