This is our wind history from Monday. You can see we had a few hours of strong winds and fierce gusts. Probably the most afraid I've been for a while - if the anchor let go we wouldn't really have had much time to do anything about it. We knew the anchor was well buried in sand but there was still a small fear that something could go wrong.

The winds on the first day were from the west which wasn't an ideal direction for the anchorage; however they were forecast to go north west which would be better. If things went wrong there were buoys to pick up. In theory!

The signs of the approaching storm came with the swell early Monday morning. A few hours later the wind followed. We bounced up and down in the sea, buffeted by 30kt winds which kept on rising. Squalls of over 40kt bore down on us blowing the tops off waves and testing our anchors to the limit. Pimentao and Riverdancer lost snubbers but luckily all four of us held fast to our anchors.

Gilly suggested a word game over the radio which helped pass the time. We've sat through a storm before on Jura where we were on a mooring buoy; there Emerald sat to the wind and it never really got that uncomfortable; here every time a squall arrived we were pushed sideways testing the anchor's limits. Every so often we started the engine just to make sure all was ok.

Then in the middle of the afternoon the wind drastically decreased and began to spin around from every direction making things very uncomfortable as the big swell was still from the west. Bounce and roll, bounce and roll we sat there wondering what on earth was going on. Much of the time we didn't even sit to the wind or the swell so who knows what was causing that. It was almost as worrying as there being strong winds as we didn't know what was going on.

By evening things had settled down with the wind from the north west and the bulk of Monte Santa Caterina giving us shelter. Rain arrived which was handy as it washed all the salt spray off the boat. We were still rolling like pigs in mud which made getting to sleep a bit tricky but we felt much safer now.