Perspective from the first mate:
After a day and night sail after pulling up anchor in Mar Menor, we dropped anchor next to a beautiful island of Isla Fromentera which is a wildlife and nature reserve in the Balieric islands of Spain. This was our favorite anchorage so far that we stayed for 3 nights….and perhaps overstayed our welcome…. The island has historic salt flats which attract birds of all sorts. We weren’t the only ones as we were surrounded by several other yachts making a day sail from Ibiza to see the wildlife. After relaxing a bit after our crossing from the mainland we took the dinghy to shore with our bikes and toured the island. We left the cats on board thinking we would spare the birds stopping to rest on the island. The little port even had a veterinarian! Not even the human doctor had such a prized location on the docs where the ferries unloaded. We stocked up on our queso Manchego and enjoyed some beautiful relaxing evenings on the boat. While lounging on the deck on one of those evenings we spotted a sinister looking dark vessel with too many protruding antennae to be one of the leisurely sort. It started to come for us. Just as I was telling my husband that we were being stalked by a war ship, when I saw “aduana” which means customs. Three men hopped onto a dinghy and boarded the Salty Paws. I sprang into defensive action, invited the nice gentlemen to have a seat (who also spoke very good English) and assaulted them with my artillery of paperwork….passports, ship documents, cat vaccination certificates, crew lists, boat specifications, insurance, and VHF licenses….about 2kg of it. They had nothing to say accept have a good evening and wished us a nice journey to our next stop in Italy. I have to say, the officials in Spain have been the most helpful and pleasant people to deal with. I smiled proudly knowing all my hard work to prepare for engagements with officials was paying off….turns out I would need those skills again upon entering Italy.
After a day and night sail after pulling up anchor in Mar Menor, we dropped anchor next to a beautiful island of Isla Fromentera which is a wildlife and nature reserve in the Balieric islands of Spain. This was our favorite anchorage so far that we stayed for 3 nights….and perhaps overstayed our welcome…. The island has historic salt flats which attract birds of all sorts. We weren’t the only ones as we were surrounded by several other yachts making a day sail from Ibiza to see the wildlife. After relaxing a bit after our crossing from the mainland we took the dinghy to shore with our bikes and toured the island. We left the cats on board thinking we would spare the birds stopping to rest on the island. The little port even had a veterinarian! Not even the human doctor had such a prized location on the docs where the ferries unloaded. We stocked up on our queso Manchego and enjoyed some beautiful relaxing evenings on the boat. While lounging on the deck on one of those evenings we spotted a sinister looking dark vessel with too many protruding antennae to be one of the leisurely sort. It started to come for us. Just as I was telling my husband that we were being stalked by a war ship, when I saw “aduana” which means customs. Three men hopped onto a dinghy and boarded the Salty Paws. I sprang into defensive action, invited the nice gentlemen to have a seat (who also spoke very good English) and assaulted them with my artillery of paperwork….passports, ship documents, cat vaccination certificates, crew lists, boat specifications, insurance, and VHF licenses….about 2kg of it. They had nothing to say accept have a good evening and wished us a nice journey to our next stop in Italy. I have to say, the officials in Spain have been the most helpful and pleasant people to deal with. I smiled proudly knowing all my hard work to prepare for engagements with officials was paying off….turns out I would need those skills again upon entering Italy.
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