Anchoring in Porto Colom for emergencies and the cost of an overnight on a Buoy during August is 20 Euro.

ANCHORING in the Balearic Islands.

I would say that I’m quite a considerate person, to the extent that I’ll go out of my way not to cause a nuisance. I don’t make unnecessary noise and when it comes to anchoring, I make sure that I give plenty of room to other vessels that are near to me allowing for a full 360 degrees swing, I display my anchor ball during the day and put an anchor light on at night; so it really pisses me off when other people don’t give me the same consideration. The vast majority of boats don’t put up an anchor ball, they park so close to each other, but usually to me, that their swing will inevitably cause them to collide, and sods law says that will happen in the middle of the night or as soon as I take the dingy ashore to walk the dog or do a bit of shopping, so it’s a constant source of worry but they don’t seem to care or worse they don’t appear to understand.

Sheer incompetence or arrogance or ignorance; whichever it is, it gives me the hump. I came away to sail in the Med so that I could de-stress, not so that I could replace one stressful life with another. In the same way that I didn’t buy a house that was slap bang on the end of a dangerous road notorious for HGV trucks driving through the living room; when I anchor I leave plenty of space and hope for a trouble-free evening, what I don’t expect is that everyone can later invade that space and end up with their bow sprite in my cockpit. I put fenders along both sides of my boat but they seem to see that as an invitation to anchor even closer. I swear; it doesn’t matter how much room is available in an anchorage, these lunatics seem to be attracted to me and each other like magnets and it doesn’t seem to matter how new or shiny their own boats are.

In the more popular spots, Port de Soller is a good example; there is the 5 o’clock rush. Boats flee the surrounding Cala”s and head for the bright lights bars and restaurants that encircle the anchorage and they pack themselves in like sardines. Most of the boats are charters but regardless of ownership, most of their skippers are brainless. 6 or 7 o’clock arrives and then the wind shifts 180 degrees. The carnage is a sight to behold, and everybody is blaming everybody else as boats start to bounce off one another. None of them has an anchor ball up and they all have varying degrees of chain length deployed, anything from 10 meters to 50 meters but all in 5 meters depth of water, nobody is really sure what kind of swing the other actually has.

My strategy is simple, I always display the correct day a night anchor symbol and have a tripping buoy marking the location of my anchor. That can backfire if someone decides it might be a pick-up buoy for a mooring. When they arrive and park too close, I politely ask them to move. When they shrug their shoulders with indifference and don’t move, because they are just plain stubborn, rude or clueless, or all of the above, I take out my logbook, record all of their positions relative to me and photograph them with my phone, making it obvious that I am recording all of their details. I then casually ask them if they have insurance…

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But at least I have a clear log of events if the worst should happen and I would be able to prove that I had done everything reasonable to prevent a collision under IRPCS. Or at least that’s what I would expect in an EU country. The reality is that there are no authorities, harbour master, port captain or port police that you could call on to mediate, not because they don’t exist, but because they are nowhere to be seen. Even where such people exist they seem to spend their lives at siesta or working hard at doing nothing that anybody could reasonably constitute as being of any reasonable value or worth.

My experience to date is that if there were to be a collision while at anchor or indeed an accident in any circumstances, that the authorities would likely apportion fault based on a single factor; who is the Mallorcan or Spaniard and who is the foreigner. In The Islas Balaerics, respect based on nationality seems to adhere to the following hierarchy; Mallorcan, Spanish, German, French and then the rest of us.

There are harbour speed limits that aren’t enforced or observed, speed boats drag children through a packed anchorage at 30 knots on an inflatable doughnut or a banana while Red Cross or Balaerics Government lifeguards watch from the beach. Either they don’t like their kids very much or it’s somebody else’s responsibility or they didn’t see anything or simply mannyana.

There is a real sense of apathy, an attitude of do nothing until something happens, the saying; “an ounce of prevention” …. doesn’t seem to exist in the Mallorcan mind.

This all sounds like I’m having a right old bleat, and I am, but running parallel to my frustration with the lack of order that exists here is also a sense of freedom because no real rules mean no real restrictions either. Sure, there are some areas where you can’t anchor anymore because the Government is trying to protect the seagrass, but in reality what they have done is to mark off areas that are either of no value to someone wanting to anchor or they have put buoys out, but they’ve really only done that in commercial ports like Porto Colom or Porto Petro where its easy for them to collect their 20 Euro per night, placing buoys in all of the Calla’s would be too difficult for them to manage, so you see I’m a real fan of apathy in the right circumstances.

The longer we spend cruising around the Balearic Islands, the better we are able to anticipate what someone is likely to do or not and so taking precautions becomes more intuitive and so less stressful. Don’t get me wrong, I’d prefer it if everybody would just learn and apply the IRPCS rules, but I think I’ve got more chance of winning the lottery.