When we began our trip last April we generally stumbled into storms without any knowledge of their existence. Oh how times have changed. Now we have a rolling 5 day weather forecast that we follow and double-check with various other references. So when we saw that a 30kn northerly storm was forecast for Sunday we chose the best anchorage on Saturday and decided to wait it out, that anchorage happened to be in the port town of San Antonio, Ibiza - famous for Cafe del Mar and drunken British louts.

It looked like a nice protected bay so I was really looking forward to a good nights sleep as I deprived myself of it the previous two nights with my mind racing after hearing of potential really good news from Australia. Unfortunately, no sleep was to be had as the protected bay turned into a rolly nightmare and music played until the wee hours.

On Sunday morning our Dutch neighbour dingy'ed over to enquire whether we knew about the storm and the bad weed for anchoring as he seen many other boats drag during his two week stint in the bay and as we were in front of him he wanted to make sure he was safe. Fair enough. Hugh dived in to have a look at our anchor and we decided to move it to a better sandy spot. Now we felt confident for the storm which was to start at 2pm and build until midnight.

It was nice to see all crews on their decks preparing, watching and waiting. One had the feeling that everyone was looking out for each other. Then at 3pm along comes a yacht and a catamaran and lay their anchors in front of us and in front of the Dutch guy. There is always one (or two in this case)! I called to Hugh that I think this will mean trouble so after a while I dingy'ed over to say hello and voice my concern. A Spanish family with no english only - it's ok, it's ok and no problem, no problem. Our British neighbour who was also concerned went over to them but to no avail. To comfort us the Spanish guy put out a second anchor but I had that feeling in my gut.

At 6pm two boats to our port side had dragged and were trying to lay anchor again (one of those boats dragged 3 times that night in total). At 8pm the storm hit 30 knots and the bay was rough, the boat in front surfed from side to side but held it's ground. At 10pm Hugh and I were downstairs when a neighbour flashed their lights on our boat to alert us that the boat in front was coming for us. We frantically dropped more chain and got out of their way. Thankfully they avoided us. We were sure that the guy would now lift his anchor and move to the side (where there was lots of room) but no he stayed put in what was our spot only a few minutes earlier. We went over to ask him nicely to move (ok we yelled at him) but no he was staying. Nothing we could do but watch out for him to drag again.

Later the catamaran that also arrived at 3pm dragged and headed for the Dutch boat behind us. We and our neighbour flashed our lights to alert them. Luckily they got our message and narrowly missed each other. I ended up staying on deck watching out for boats dragging until 4am when the wind finally died. Another nights sleep lost. Hugh avoided me yesterday :) but we got great sleep last night. I'm starting to believe the old saying that sometimes it's safer being at sea in storms than in a bay.