Wally Vantanera. Photo: Victor Gabriel Hofer

The Balearic Grand Cruise.

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever. — Jacques Cousteau

Thirteen days. Four islands. Your pace.

Barefoot. Unhurried. Real.

Vantanera doesn't have an timetable. She has a coastline. You can't miss the boat because you're already on it. Thirteen days between three islands where luxury and salt water are inseparable, and the only schedule is the wind.

This is a cruise for people who want to swim before breakfast, eat lunch with their feet up, watch the sun drop behind Es Vedrà, and fall asleep to the sound of nothing. It's a place to take the helm or to not move from your book all afternoon. Both are the right call. Vantanera is 30.6 metres of Wally — fast, beautiful, and completely yours. She doesn't do templates. She does Tuesdays that feel like the best day of your life.

Mallorca's dramatic west coast. Ibiza's golden energy. Formentera's impossible water. Cabrera's silence. The route shapes itself around you, the weather, and whatever the sea offers. This isn't a holiday. It's a week to lose and find yourself at the same time.

Mallorca: Palma → Port Andratx → Sóller

Days 01-03

You step on board in Palma. The cathedral disappears behind you. The city dissolves. And just like that, you're in a different world — one that runs on wind and light and the feeling that nobody knows where you are. Because they don't.

First stop, Port Andratx. A short sail, just enough to feel Vantanera come alive under you. Dinner ashore in the harbour or on deck — your call, your night, your rules. There are no rules.

Day two belongs to the west coast. The Serra de Tramuntana dropping straight into the sea, pine forests clinging to cliffs, bays that don't exist on any app because they only make sense from the water. Vantanera moves through it the way a Wally moves through everything — like she was designed for exactly this moment. Because she was. Sunset dinner at Sa Foradada. A table carved into the rock. The light doing things that light only does here.

On to Sóller. The port at the foot of the mountains. The old tram rattling up to the village. Stone houses and orange groves and the kind of quiet that makes you realise how loud your life normally is. Anchor in the bay. Swim off the boat. Eat something incredible. Go to sleep with the mountains above you and the sea below you and absolutely nothing on your mind.

Ibiza: Cala Jondal, Es Cubells, Marina Ibiza

Days 04 - 08

Morning crossing. Open water. Mallorca shrinks, Ibiza sharpens. And then five days on an island that most people think they know but almost nobody actually understands.

Ibiza from Vantanera is a different island. You anchor at Cala Jondal and suddenly the noise is gone. Lunch at Casa Jondal — feet in the sand, the kind of meal that turns two o'clock into six o'clock without anyone noticing or caring. Move to Es Cubells for the evening. A clifftop village so small you can see the whole thing from the cockpit. A church. A sunset. Es Vedrà in the distance doing what Es Vedrà does — making everything else look ordinary.

Five days is the difference between visiting Ibiza and living it. One morning you wake up and swim before anyone's awake and the water is so still it feels like glass. One afternoon you take the tender to a beach with no name and no people and eat fruit you bought at the market. One evening you berth at Marina Ibiza and walk Dalt Vila after dark, the fortress walls lit above you, the harbour below. Another evening you stay on deck and do nothing at all and it's the best evening of the trip.

Ibiza doesn't need you to do things. Ibiza needs you to stop doing things. Vantanera gives you the space for both.

Formentera

Days 09 - 11

The crossing takes an hour. The shift takes a second. Formentera is a different frequency. The water isn't blue — it's the colour that blue wishes it was. The beaches empty by mid-afternoon. The silence isn't the absence of sound. It's a sound of its own.

Three days here. You anchor in the shallows off Ses Illetes and the boat barely moves. You swim before breakfast because the water is right there and it's warm and it's clear and you can see the bottom thirty feet down and there's no reason not to. Lunch at Juan y Andrea on the beach. Or on board. Or nowhere — maybe you skip lunch and swim again and eat at five when you feel like it. There are no rules.

This is the part of the trip people talk about years later. Not because something happened. Because nothing needed to. The water. The light. The warmth. The gentle rock of the boat at anchor. The feeling that you're not on holiday — you're just alive, and paying attention to it for the first time in a while.

Cabrera & South Mallorca → Return to Palma

Days 12 - 13

South from Formentera to Cabrera. A national park. A protected island. An anchorage that feels like the Mediterranean before anyone found it and put it on Instagram. No marina. No restaurant. No signal. Just crystal water, the old fortress on the hill, and the kind of silence that you don't hear — you feel.

Last swim. Last lunch on board. The kind of afternoon where you sit in the cockpit and let thirteen days settle into you. Every bay. Every sunset. Every morning when the water was still and the coffee was hot and the world was just the boat and the sea and the people on board and nothing else.

Then a gentle sail north. Mallorca's south coast in the late afternoon light. The island welcoming you back like it knows where you've been and what it did to you.

Disembarkation in Palma in the evening. Thirteen days. Four islands. You left as a guest. You come back as someone who knows what the Mediterranean actually feels like when you stop trying to see it and start living in it.