The weather's been really settled so far this summer in the Balearics, but the other morning we woke up as the wind began to get stronger and stronger. As usual we'd been sitting talking and drinking Corona in the cockpit all night as Carita is even more nocturnal than I am and we'd gone to bed just an hour or two before. Some of the other boats began to drag through the anchorage and waves were coming straight in through the harbour entrance so we sat with the engine running just in case we began to drag as well.

Things carried on like that for most of the morning, our anchor held, but a local boat dragged and suddenly ended up against the breakwater rocks. The wind had them pinned there, unable to manoeuvre away, and so I took the dinghy over and along with some others, helped pull them off.

The anchorage here behind the new harbour wall of Ibiza town is normally quite well sheltered but the port police still appear every couple of days and kick all of the boats out. For some reason or other, although everyone does it, they don't like boats anchored here but there isn't anywhere else as well protected close to the city so we often end up back again doing the marine equivalent of illegal parking. Yesterday morning we were suddenly awoken by a policeman blowing a whistle in through the hatch like someone straight from a rave. Again I shot up onto deck in a semi-conscious panic, again lots of shouting at me in Spanish, and again we had to move the boat.