PALMA INTERNATIONAL BOAT SHOW
Late April · Moll Vell · Four Days · Since 1984
The Palma International Boat Show is four days at the end of April in the old harbour of Palma de Mallorca: the show that opens the Mediterranean season.
The yachts lie at the foot of the old town, and the cathedral stands over all of them.
The Cathedral
Tradition says Palma’s cathedral was promised at sea. In 1229 James I of Aragon sailed to take Mallorca from its Moorish rulers, and when a storm caught his fleet on the crossing he vowed a church to the Virgin if he came through. He took the city that December, and the cathedral was raised on the site of its great mosque, facing the water.
It took centuries to finish. In the early twentieth century Antoni Gaudí was brought in to rework its interior, and hung a great canopy over the altar.
The Yards
Palma is where the Mediterranean’s large yachts are kept. Its yards work through the winter on boats that spend the summer elsewhere, and in spring the harbour fills with yachts just out of refit, which is why the season opens here.
The show began in 1984. Its largest yachts, those over twenty-four metres, lie in a village of their own along the quay, and the great sailing yachts, for which Palma is particularly known, have a harbour of their own nearby.
It is a relaxed show by the standards of the trade: not yet hot, not yet crowded, and business is done at a walking pace.
What to Know
Brokers come to fill the summer. Charters for July and August are settled here, over lunch as often as aboard.
The old town is a few steps from the quay.
Mallorca in spring is the island at its best, before the summer crowds arrive.
The Copa del Rey, the King’s Cup regatta, is sailed from Palma later in the summer.
Soft soles on every deck, and shoes off at the passerelle of the larger yachts.
The Court
The Palma International Boat Show is not the Court’s own. Appointments aboard the yachts a member wants to see, for purchase or for the summer’s charter, are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of the visit: getting there, where to stay in the old town, and the table afterward. A member who means to charter in July should come in April.
How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.
Set down September MMXXVI