After being at anchor for the past several weeks it was time for Curare and her crew to head into a marina to get cleaned up and ready for the next adventure. Since we were in the Bahia de Palma we searched through our Navily app for a suitable place stay for a week. Palma is an enormous, actually ginormous, superyacht basin. There are literally hundreds and possibly a thousand super yachts moored to the docks around the bay but mainly within the port area of Palma. The Port of Palma has an impressive superyacht work yard 
where the boats can be fixed up after the summer in the Med before heading across to the Caribbean for the winter cruising season. It boasts three travel lifts, numerous cranes and 50 or more boats greater than 100 feet on the hard in various states of repair, renovation, maintenance and painting. The possibility of getting any work done on 36 foot Curare was essentially zero. Why would a repairman bother with our steering wheel reconstruction for a few hundred Euro when there are multi million Euro projects to be had everywhere. Back to doing repairs ourselves I guess.
So, along with the superyachts come super high costs to moor. Fortunately there are still a few small boat basins in the bay and we managed to secure space within the Real Club Nautico de Palma de Mallorca, a member of the International Council of Yacht Clubs. When we arrived on our scheduled day we were greeted by a marinero in a inflatable that guided us to a small (very small) space between two sailboats. After a bit of maneuvering we managed to get Curare squeezed in and tied bow to the dock. Within minutes the hose was running and the washing began, we hadn't been to a marina since we left Tunisia and Curare was looking rather grubby. Our berth was near the end of a very long dock and we had a great view as sail and power boats went in and out of the marina, but it was a long, long walk to the bathroom and showers.
The RCNP is a huge marina and yacht club, the oldest and largest in the Balearic Islands, founded in 1948. It's most famous member is the King of Spain - his majesty Juan Carlos - but we did not get to meet him. There are berths for nearly 1,000 boats ranging from 15 feet to 70 feet, and around 30% of these are reserved for non-members. It is the host facility for national and international regattas, hosting three regattas in the eight days we were there, and daily sail training took place in Optimists, Lasers, 29ers and 49ers. As reciprocal club members we were permitted into the elegant clubhouse were we enjoyed a nice lunch one afternoon, but we did not have use of the two swimming pools or the gymnasium. This did not bother us we were far too busy cleaning, repairing and getting Curare ready for another trip.
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