dear meltemi,

well, you had fun the last couple of days, didn´t you?

we stayed an extra day in Samos just to get out of you way, but little did we know, that there was no escape!

so there we were, leaving early and hoping to have a great day sailing - not to heavy, as i don´t have my sealegs yet.

and nicely it started...the cross seas you had pushed up got a bit heavy on my stomach, but calling it seasickness would have been too much.

a couple of hours into our day though you decided to start playing with us. almost expecting you to, we didn´t fall for your wind hole and kept the sails reefed (sail reefing is to make the sail smaller, when you get strong winds). that must have made you quite angry, because only a few minutes later you came back to us with 30kt winds and more!

you must have laughed you head off when you figured out, that we made a beginners-mistake and forgot to close the hatch under the dinghy (little tender boat) i suppose, or why did you throw these big waves at us every now and then to cover us all over?

we actually enjoyed sailing you though!...soon to find out that sailing hard meltemi is not the problem...finding a hiding hole for a quite night though - this is the real issue.

so we headed for fournoi island. with its little bays open to the south it seemed to be just perfect to hide from you, as you tend to make your way from north to north west.

but you got a fierce friend that you cooperate with: the katabatic wind...so whenever you seem to get a tiny bit tired, your friend helps you out by throwing massive winds down the hills of the islands and from all sort of directions, until you are back in the game.

so we tried to anchor and...of course the bloody thing didn´t grab. we had to try and try and try in pretty heavy conditions -finally we landlined between boats and hardly caught any sleep, because you would either push us onto one of the other boats or let us slip towards the rocks behind us.

not only didn´t we anchor well - you also made our bed wet! - (or so did we, by not closing the hatch, which happened to be right above the forward bed) - but don´t you laugh to soon - because we simply moved into one of the other cabins for the night, anyway only finding little sleep.

the next morning we decided to move, find a nice stop for the day to dry out the front cabin and to finally get a day of rest.

after some pretty tricky manouvering during which you again decided to go above 30kn with the gusts, we almost lost the bimini (i.e. sunshade) to you- but after setting not only one anchor but two and two well placed landlines we managed to be safe and sound... whatever you threw at us today, we managed to find a nice spot, catch up on some sleep and snorkeled in freezing cold water (about 19°C i´d say) that you brought up from the depths of the aegean. we had a great day, hoping to have passed your test and we will see you again tomorrow, when we head of to paros.

our second anchorage. a nice and safe spot near the jetty

strong gusts coming from every direction