Balearic Islands

There are four Balearic Islands most people have heard of, and a fifth most haven't. Cabrera is the smallest of the chain, sitting about fifteen kilometres south of Mallorca and protected as a national park since 1991, which means you can only land there with a daily permit. The other four are the famous ones. Mallorca is the largest and the most varied, with the Tramuntana mountain range running down its west coast, a UNESCO Cultural Landscape since 2011. Menorca is famous for its calas, the small white-sand coves that line the south coast. Ibiza needs no introduction. And Formentera, twelve thousand residents and a single road across it, has some of the cleanest water in the western Mediterranean.

A typical Balearics charter starts on Mallorca or Ibiza and works its way around. The west coast of Mallorca runs under the Tramuntana mountains, with anchorages at Port de Sóller, Cala Deià and Sant Elm; the inland village of Deià above them is where the British poet Robert Graves lived for fifty years, which is part of why the village still feels different from the rest of the island. Crossing south to Formentera, you anchor off Espalmador or Illetes for lunch on what is more or less the most flawless white sand in the western Med. Menorca's south coast then offers Cala Macarella, Cala en Turqueta or Cala Galdana, depending on which direction the wind is blowing.

Anchoring in the islands is managed because of Posidonia, the protected seagrass that grows in patches across the shallow bays, with no-anchor zones over the meadows. A good captain reserves the mooring buoys ahead and handles the Cabrera permits separately, so the yacht still spends its nights in the coves you came for rather than further out. The season runs late May to early October, with August the busiest stretch and June and September the months serious charter clients tend to choose.