The Balearics are sold as one destination and are really four.
Anyone who has only been to Ibiza, or only to Mallorca, has a firm opinion about what these islands are, and it is usually wrong about the other three. Mallorca has a mountain range and a serious restaurant culture. Menorca is low, quiet and lined with undeveloped coves. Ibiza has a reputation that its own northern half does not deserve. Formentera has the clearest water in the western Mediterranean and almost nothing built on it.
The crossings between them run one to three hours. That is the whole argument for doing this by yacht: you can change what kind of holiday you are having before lunch.
Start in Mallorca
Palma is the practical embarkation point — an international airport twenty minutes from the water, and the best provisioning in the islands.
Head north-west along the Tramuntana, where a UNESCO-listed landscape of terraces and dry-stone walls drops straight into the sea. Anchor below Deià and take the tender in to Sa Foradada, where paella is cooked over wood on a headland with no road worth the name.
South to Formentera
The run down to Formentera is the moment the week changes. The water shifts to a pale, unreal turquoise over seagrass meadows — a protected habitat, which is why anchoring is regulated and why your captain will use the buoy fields rather than dropping wherever he likes.
Ses Illetes is the beach everyone photographs. Juan y Andrea sends a dinghy out to collect you from the anchorage, which tells you most of what you need to know about how this island works.
Ibiza, on your own terms
Anchor off Cala d'Hort for Es Vedrà — a 400-metre limestone monolith with a sunset that has been drawing people for a very long time. Then decide which Ibiza you want.
The south-west is the island of the reputation. The north — Portinatx, Benirràs, the coves below Sant Joan — is pine forest, empty water and almost nobody. Both are twenty minutes apart by sea, and arriving on your own keel is the only way to have both in the same day.
Go ashore in the evening for Dalt Vila, the walled UNESCO old town above the port, which is better after dark and better on foot.
Menorca, if there is time
Menorca is the one that gets left off the itinerary and the one people wish they had kept. A biosphere reserve, no high-rise development, and a northern coast of red-sand coves — Pregonda, Cavalleria — that are reachable from the sea and barely otherwise.
Practical notes
- Late May, June and September are the months. July and August are hot, and Formentera's anchorages fill by mid-morning.
- Posidonia seagrass is legally protected across the Balearics. Anchoring on it carries real fines — a properly briefed captain uses the marked buoy fields, and you should expect that.
- Berths in Ibiza and Formentera in August are booked months ahead. Anchoring is usually the better experience regardless.
- Catamarans suit these islands: shallow draught for the coves, and space for the long lunches that are most of the point.
Four islands, one week
What people remember afterwards is rarely a single anchorage. It is the range — that a mountain village lunch and an empty sandbank were the same Tuesday.
Tell us your dates and how many of you there are, and we will shape the week around which of the four you actually want.
