Barca a vela Oceanis 41.1

Great destination for sailing, snorkelling, kayaking and eating out

The charter company were really good -as always there were one or two niggles but the engineer in particular could not have been more helpful. Charts and pilot books were in German - glad we brought out British pilot and an Imray chart of the whole of Mallorca. The charts were fine but the one of the whole island for overall passage planning was too small scale to be useful. As always neither German nor British pilot books were quite up to date - in particular whether buoys are in a particular bay varies from year to year. The boat was lovely (Oceanis 41.1 3 yr old), sailed well into the wind and we got over 8knots out of it on a beam reach. I had a surprise at how wide modern Beneteaus are. The shape can be a problem when mooring stern to, you really do need someone on shore. On the whole the marineros in the marinas could not have been more helpful, particularly when attempting stern to in a narrow berth with a wind blowing. I suppose they have seen it all before! Wind predictions (we were using Spanish Gribb files) did not appear to account for local heat generated winds. The best sailing was often in the large bays eg Alcudia. The marinas are shallow - quite a few would not take our 2.2m keel.