The weather forecast for the day was for rain,
but when we woke up it was brilliant sunshine and very warm. We had a leisurely breakfast while we
left the mainsail up to dry out after yesterday’s rain. Then we flaked it and put it in the
sail bag. We will need to have it
valetted as it is quite dirty in parts.
That is another thing we shall have to arrange. While we are at it we want to have new
cars sewed on at the same time so it goes up and down the mast more smoothly.
After we put the sail away we take out the bikes
and cycle into town. I am quite
proud of myself for having made it there and back without mishap. I have managed to learn to ride slowly
through crowds of people, much to my surprise. In the town we found the main square and managed to buy
bread and some milk. We also stop
and have a café granita, which I really enjoy.
We get back to the boat and it is still very
hot. I even change in to my bikini
and consider whether we should go to the beach this afternoon. We were beginning to wish that we had
sailed from Siracusa today in the bright sun, instead of yesterday’s trip in
the rain. But as I am sitting in
the cockpit and Richard is putting away the sail bag I notice a huge black
cloud on its way here. Richard just
manages to get all the gear he put out to dry away when it hit. First there was a huge wind. It went up to 25 knots in minutes and
eventually hit 46 knots! I’m not
sure we have seen winds that strong before and that is here in a protected
harbour. As Richard tries to get
everything in the one thing he has no time to rescue is my sailing gloves, left
out to dry. They both get picked
up by the wind and blow off the boat!
I am certain that they are in the water and that is the end of them, but
no, they have just landed in the cockpit of the next boat, so we can recover
them later. The wind is pushing us
back on the pontoon and it is clear that we are too close to it and there is a
bollard we are about to hit. So as
the rain starts to come down in torrents, Richard is putting the engine on to
move forward, away from the pontoon. The wind is too strong to try to tighten
up on the forward lines. It is all
a bit exciting to say the least. But it does prove that we are in a good place
and the boat is not moving about as much as we had feared, so that augurs well
for the rest of the winter. After
about 15 minutes the wind drops again and Richard is able to switch off the
engine. We are now really glad
that we decided to come here yesterday, not today.
After sorting everything out we retreat to the
saloon. It is about 1:30pm, so we
have lunch. The rain keeps on
quite heavily until about 4:00pm; as soon as it stops Richard is able to adjust
all the mooring lines and is much happier. This is really the first day of this whole summer when the
weather was so bad that we had to stay in the boat all afternoon. We really can’t complain about that!
We are having Roger and Lynn from the Oyster
around for drinks this evening. So I put our dinner together to be ready to
stick in the oven after our drinks.
I am making an Eggplant Parmigiana, one of my favourite meals. We take advantage of a lull in the rain
and go for showers and then have a very pleasant evening with our guests. They say there are 10 or 11 large Oysters
here for the winter! During the
high winds their wind gauge, at the top of their very tall mast, read 76 knots.
The weather is iffy again for tomorrow, but we
hope it will be OK in the morning to get more sails off.
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