Mallorca → Menorca → Mallorca

Island Hopping
Turquoise calas, Georgian harbors, and the Menorca Channel.

The Mallorca-Menorca charter week is the classic Balearic sail – the one that puts you on both of the archipelago’s main islands with real time ashore in Menorca’s three major harbors.

Alcúdia on Mallorca’s northeast coast is the base: direct ferry from Barcelona (3.5 hours on the fast service, 7 hours overnight), a short channel crossing to Menorca, and more time at anchor instead of under way.

2 Island Crossings

3 Menorca Ports

7 Days on the Water

8 Nights Aboard

UNESCO Biosphere

Mahón’s Georgian Harbor

Fornells Caldereta

S Coast Calas

Chartered 46-footer

Alcúdia’s medieval walled old town, half a kilometer from the marina, is a short evening walk – Roman stones underfoot, Gothic churches, a Tuesday and Sunday market where you can provision for the week and still have time for a glass of local Binissalem wine in the square.

Two open-water crossings for proper teaching, three Menorca ports, and the southern calas that put this island on every sailor’s bucket list. For most students this is their first proper inter-island cruising week.

Mahón sits on the east coast – the deepest natural harbor in the Mediterranean, nearly four miles long, famous since antiquity.

The British took Menorca in 1708 and held it for most of the eighteenth century, and the town still shows it: Georgian sash windows on Spanish stone houses, the admiralty building on the quay, and the local gin distilleries that have been making dry gin on this island since the British taught them how.

Dinner at a port-side terrace – Mahón-Menorca DOP cheese (semi-cured, deep orange, bite of salt), grilled fish straight from the Balearic fleet, and a pomada (Mahón gin with cloudy lemon) afterward – is a sailor’s evening on this island.

The north coast is a different Menorca – wilder, redder, exposed to the tramontana wind. Fornells is the harbor you want: tucked at the back of a long inlet, famous across Spain for its caldereta de langosta – the lobster stew that pulls Spanish diners up from Madrid for the weekend. Es Pla and Can Miquel on the quay are the two historic houses that fight over who invented it. It is the thing to eat on this island, and you plan the week around a dinner here. Past Fornells, Cap de Cavalleria is Menorca’s northernmost point, with a lighthouse perched over red cliffs and the Parque Natural de s’Albufera des Grau wetlands reserve just inland.

Ciutadella is Menorca’s old capital on the west coast – a long narrow natural harbor cut into the limestone, Gothic palaces lining the quay, and a Baroque old town climbing the Hill behind. The Palacio Salort opens its state rooms to the public. Dinner in the old town at one of the small restaurants under the arcades (Menorcan lobster, caldereta if it’s on, Mahón cheese to finish), breakfast at the port, and then the return crossing back toward Mallorca.

Want this trip without the certification?
See Sailing Vacations →