The last 2 weeks of this year have been characterised by strong winds with gales on successive weekends. After leaving Nidri with our new backstays we have spent our time around the northern islands of the Ionian inland sea.

For the last week we were anchored in Vlikho near Nidri when severe weather came through. We spent all night on watch and our anchor dragged with a 45kn gust at about 5am. We quickly took up the anchor and after carefully getting into position again we re-anchored with an extra 15 metres of chain out. 10 minutes later we were sitting in the cockpit with the world around us full of water flying horizontally off the surface of the bay. We held our breaths and waited - finally the gust died and our anchor had held. On looking around several boats were moving about trying to re-anchor and our instruments showed a maximum wind speed of 57kn. Talking to friends next day we heard that others had registered up to 60kn.

The following day we stayed on board as the winds slowly subsided and then had a quiet day giving us the chance to dry the sails, remove and pack them away. Another gale warning didn't happen and we eventually moved to Preveza for final preparations to be hauled out. On the last night we again had strong winds reaching force 7 and only got about 4 hours sleep. Finally we had Kerenne hauled out and spent a day ashore getting her ready for the winter.

We have now returned home to the UK after travelling by ferry to Brindisi to visit John's family. This visit didn't all go to plan either with our flight home being cancelled due to industrial action and we finally flew home 2 days later than planned. We are now relaxing with our family and starting to look forward to plans for the garden at home and what we might do next year on board Kerenne.