Short trips in the Mediterranean: 2018-2023, (and some considerations that may be upsetting).

Conditioned navigations.

The image is taken from the Peruvian blog «Historia, geografía, economía» which can be accessed by clicking this link.

The image is taken from the online encyclopedia «concepto» of the Argentine publishing house Etecé, which is freely accessible.

The image is taken from the online encyclopedia «concepto» of the Argentine publishing house Etecé, which is freely accessible.

Image taken from the blog «solosequenosenada», which can be accessed by clicking on this link

Human beings are not born free. Humans are born conditioned, in addition to their animal nature as omnivorous mammals, by multiple other circumstances, all of them beyond their control. Apart from the animality mentioned above, another of them, perhaps the most decisive conditioning, is the cradle where he is born, the social class to which he belongs from that very moment, the socio-political and economic system in which that social class is immersed. For example, I was born in the mid-twentieth century in the bosom of a working-class family (no matter how much aristocratic pretensions my father might have), and that working class is, in turn, immersed in a pathogenic socio-political and economic system called the capitalist system. A social system known for mercilessly exploiting human beings, enslaving them in very subtle ways, while at the same time exploiting the finite resources of the planet without restraint, putting the whole of humanity -what shall I say!– putting all living beings on the planet at imminent risk of extinction. The human being, then, is not born free. Freedom is a vague yearning, a distant goal towards which one does not always tend and for which it is necessary to fight tirelessly, day after day. But, above all, freedom can only be a collective achievement, a universal conquest.

Meanwhile, small partial victories are always possible, tiny bits of freedom torn from the system and enjoyed almost in secret, as if it were a shameful act of onanism. So let’s get to it…

The lack of freedom above explains the brevity and infrequency of Kif Kif‘s sailings in the Mediterranean between the date of his arrival in Palma de Mallorca, in a hurry to reintegrate the job, on Saturday, July 28, 2018. The date, not yet determined, of his departure for the Atlantic Ocean, scheduled for the autumn of 2023, is already somewhat more accessible and will constitute the entry to the path of some relative freedom.

The first of these navigations was conditioned by the prices of moorings in the various marinas of the Balearic Islands and took place the day after our arrival in Palma on Sunday, July 29, 2018. The Club Náutico of S’Estanyol had the most affordable offer on the island, to have the boat on the dry (in the water, prices were skyrocketing and today, at the time of writing, November 2022, they are well over a thousand and two hundred euros per month, without electricity or water, for a boat of just ten meters in length…).

Thus, as recorded in the logbook of Kif Kif, I cast off from Marina Naviera Balear that Sunday at 15:15 and, after a voyage with only the mainsail hoisted, no wind, motoring, I arrived at the harbor of s’Estanyol that same day at 19:44. There, on the dry, Kif Kif would remain there until I came back to look for her…

S’Estanyol.

Entry of the day July 29, 2018, in the Kif Kif logbook.

Kif Kif on land at the esplanade of the Club Náutico de s’Estanyol, Mallorca, Balearic Islands.

Nautical chart of the approaches to the port of s’Estanyol, southeast of the island of Mallorca. Courtesy of Navionics Inc.

S’Estanyol – Palma.

Loon, an offshore skipper and nautical technician, surveyed the scenery aboard Kif Kif on October 22, 2018, sailing into Palma harbor.

Kif Kif would not move from the esplanade of the Club Náutico de s’Estanyol until October 22, 2018, the date on which, accompanied by Loon, who wanted to know the sailboat inside, sailing, we moved the boat back to the port of Palma, where it would have to be taken out of the water again to begin to prepare it thoroughly. By clicking on this link you can access the technical pages when I have finished editing them, where you will see, in some detail (not too much, so as not to bore), the whole process… Here, however, we will deal exclusively with the actual sailings.