Agritourism

With our friends now on their way to the airport we set about a bit of boat maintenance.  After a helpful call to a brother we discovered that the house batteries were completely knackered and this was most likely the reason the winch failed to work.  It would also explain the flickering lights and inability to charge out phones the night before!  The previous batteries were only four years old but had had a hard life with extended periods of deep discharges.  We located new batteries in San Antonio and set off towards the marina.

On arrival we were not allowed to stop at the fuel dock unless we were filling up.  The marina also refused to let us tie up for half an hour.  Frustrated we set off instead to anchor in Cala Salada.  When we arrived there were no other boats on anchor which looked ominous -either forecast waves we had not spotted or the spread of Posidonia made anchoring too tricky.  Either way we had no need to risk it so settled for Cala Bassa instead.

As the sun began to set we hopped in a taxi and asked to be taken somewhere chilled for a drink.  The taxi driver dropped us of at the Cotton Club which fitted the bill perfectly.

The next day we tried again to buy new house batteries.  We succeeded but it was not as straight forward as we had expected.  From Cala Bassa we took a taxi into San Antonia to the chandlery.  Here we found two 170AH 12V AGM batteries -the only two in the shop and they were big!  Only 10AH larger than the old ones but the size and more importantly the weight was quite an increase.  While here we also bought a professional oil pump with a built in container to make oil changes quick and simple.  With my best smile I visited the marina office and persuaded the lady in charge to let us leave the batteries close to the fuel dock where we would visit later in the day to fill up a jerry can with fuel.  I don't think she realised how big the batteries were until we showed up with them!

Julia and I had always written off San Antonio as a grim town with overweight bare-chested Brits eating full English breakfasts with beer.  We felt we might be being a bit unfair so set about exploring the old town.  Sadly our initial judgement had been quite accurate so we made a plan to retreat to a nearby Agritouristim villa that had fantastic reviews.  Our taxi delivered us to paradise within ten minutes!

After our last visit to Ibiza we had become big fans of the Agritourism movement and Sa Talaia was just what we were hoping to find.  We were warmly welcomed by the owner and shown around a beautiful garden with a pool, sun beds and a restaurant.  This was absolute heaven as we slowly sipped cocktails, cooled off in the pool and sat down for a delicious lunch with a wonderful scene in front of us.

By 3pm we sadly had to leave as we had promised to collect the batteries from the marina.  We took a taxi back to Cala Bassa, weighed anchor and sailed in to San Antonio harbour.  We tied up at the fuel dock beside the marina office and while Julia set about filling up our jerry can with diesel as slowly as possible, I got rapidly to work swapping over the batteries.  This was an absolute pig of a job as the batteries weigh a ton and are buried in the stern behind the engine.  After some blood, sweat and bruising the task was complete and we made our way back out of the harbour.  To our relief everything appeared to work, including the anchor winch.  With plenty of daylight left Julia and I decided to sail 2 hours north to Cala Benirras.