With strong winds and bad weather forecast to head bring both wind and sea/swell into Santa Ponca we decided to head back to Peguara along with Steve and Janine, Craig, Heather and Bob chose the next bay to ride the storm out while Krissy Paul and quite a few other boats all stayed in Santa Ponca, the forecast changed with every update and I think we had about 52 knots forecast and I saw 47 on our instruments, but with the wind from the west we were nicely tucked in near the shore so had very little fetch and although we were ready to take action if needed all was good, unlike some of the boats in Santa Ponca where 2 ended up aground in the shadows when their anchors dragged, others were hit by boats dragging or had their own dramas like Krissy and Paul who’s anchor chain snubber book and all their chain ran out - stopped only by a knot in the rope it was attached to! In both Palma and Santa Ponca over 60 knots was recorded. Our  anchorage got a bit fuller over the course of the storm as boats from Santa Ponca moved to safety.

Gigi anchored nearby.

We spent the next week in Santa Ponca, the weather is unsettled and we endured a couple of not so good nights when strong winds from the head of the bay caused surprisingly choppy seas and fun and games with a few boats dragging anchor! We should really have moved to the cliffs less than a mile away but we are trying to move as little as possible, our anchor windlass began to play up before the storm - it's on a go slow, we tried changing the brushes, checked all connections etc with no improvement and have decided to get a new one rather than spend money trying to find the problem - it's 19 years old and we have anchored with it thousands of times so it's served us well, the problem is finding a similar one with roughly the same deck template/footprint, motor size etc, currently we are emailing Lofrans to get the template for the one we have to try and marry up with a current model - the one they suggest as a replacement doesn’t work for us! 

After a week there was a good weather window to sail across to Ibiza so we had sundowners with Steve, Janine and Craig, Steve and Janine are heading east while we head west so we won’t be seeing them again for a while and will miss them as we head on towards the Atlantic.