The expected southern weather passed. As we were at the North of the island, we did not feel that bad weather. However one night we had some real difficulties. We had the hardest storm since we left Turkey. Even we were expecting that it was going to come from South, weather came from North when we had just anchored to a small island called Francesco at the North part of main island. Sundown was close. In a flash the North horizon started to get dark. Yet, we did not understand what was going on; the crazy wind came over us with rain.

Tent gathering the rain on was tight on stern. The crazy wind started to shake the tent out extremely that I thought its connections would break away. We both ran to gather the tent. It got swollen with the crazy wind and it was nearly going to wing us. We barely wrapped it and put into the locker. We were totally wet in such a short time like we felt into water.

Our anchorage was open to the North. The bow of the boat started to go in and out of water with the big waves. Boat’s back turned to the shore. The rocks of the island were starting about 50m. back. I wanted to go to bow and check the anchor. However, this was impossible. Rain drops darted by the wind was hitting my face as bullets. OUR ULTRA ANCHOR HAS NOT DRAGGED TILL TODAY. WE TOOK COVER IN OUR BOAT HOPING IT WOULD NOT LET US DOWN THIS TIME, TOO.

Water spatters turned to a white cloud. Vision was 0. There was a small boat so close to us tied to a arch barrel and we even could not see this boat anymore……….The limit of our wind indicator was 60 knot and we were away over it……While we were thinking of how much we could survive under those conditions, the wind started to calm down.

I was surprised once I check the time. We felt like the storm lasted for hours, everything actually passed in just 30 minutes…….. We were so afraid of dragging to the rocks but it was over. I went down to take a strong drink.

Taken from Osman Atasoy’s blog   http://osmanatasoy.org