Four islands, four temperaments

The Balearics are four islands with four temperaments, set close enough together that you can change your mind after breakfast. Mallorca has the mountains, Menorca has the quiet, Ibiza has the reputation, and Formentera has the water the other three advertise. Nothing is much more than an overnight passage from anything else, and most of it is a lunch run.

An archipelago at lunch pace

Palma is the natural start, a proper city with the Gothic bulk of La Seu cathedral rising over the marina and some of the best superyacht facilities in the Mediterranean behind it. The cruising rhythm is simple, a cove in the morning, lunch ashore or on deck, a new anchorage by evening. Distances are honest, Mallorca to Menorca is a morning's run and Mallorca to Ibiza an easy day. Tell your broker which of the four temperaments you want more of when you plan a charter, because the islands reward very different appetites.

Mallorca's wild side

The north-west coast is the surprise. The Serra de Tramuntana, a UNESCO World Heritage landscape since 2011, drops ninety kilometres of terraced mountain straight into the sea, and Port de Soller is the only real harbour along it. Anchor off Cala Deia below the village where Robert Graves lived and is buried, idle past the pierced rock of Sa Foradada, and round Cap de Formentor, where the cliffs stand hundreds of metres over the channel to Menorca. Back in Palma, breakfast is an ensaimada, the coiled pastry the island is built on, and the tapas bars off the Passeig del Born hold their own against anywhere on the mainland.

Menorca, the quiet one

The whole island has been a UNESCO biosphere reserve since 1993, and it shows. The south coast is a run of pale sand coves, Cala Macarella, Macarelleta, Cala Turqueta, with pine to the waterline and nothing to buy. Fornells, on the north shore, exists for caldereta de llagosta, the lobster stew that is Menorca's one extravagance. Mahon's harbour reaches nearly five kilometres inland, one of the longest natural harbours in the Mediterranean, and the British left gin behind them, so the Xoriguer distillery still sits on the quay.

Formentera has the water the brochures promise. The protected seagrass makes it that clear, which is why your anchor never touches it.

Ibiza, Formentera and the water

Ibiza taken off-schedule is an old island, not a loud one, and the walls of Dalt Vila have been UNESCO-listed since 1999. Anchor at Cala Jondal for a long lunch, take Benirras for its drummers at sunset, and stand off Es Vedra, the great limestone rock that owns every sunset photograph taken on the west coast. Formentera, an hour south, is the point of the whole exercise, and Ses Illetes is the reason. The clarity comes from the ancient posidonia seagrass meadows below, and because anchoring on the seagrass is prohibited, yachts take the buoy fields, which book out in season and which the crew arranges while you decide between Juan y Andrea and Beso Beach for lunch.

When to come

The season runs from May to October. June and September are the islands at their best, warm sea, open coves, room on the Formentera buoys. July and August are peak everywhere, gloriously so in Ibiza if that is what you came for, less so if you wanted Macarella to yourself. The water holds its warmth well into October, and late season on the Tramuntana coast, with the crowds gone and the light low, is Mallorca's best-kept secret.