Last September we returned to Eilat energized and ready to save enough money to sail again this year. When you buckle down for hard work, there isn't much opportunity for exciting adventures. Now and then we'd get an email or a call from someone wanting a delivery and we'd perk up, but within a week or two they'd change their minds and we'd be back to our routine jobs. Adventure wasn't on the menu this winter.

It's been a pretty unpredictable winter weather-wise for those of us in the Northern hemisphere. In Eilat, winter got off to a cold start in November with snow across this region. For the first time in several years we could watch it snowing on the mountains of Jordan, across the bay.

The snow melted in a day or two, but high winds hounded the area for months on end. I remember summers in Canada when we'd count rainy weekends. This winter, in Eilat, we had weekend after weekend of strong winds. Just when we'd get a little time off and plan a day of sailing, we'd waken to 25 knots of wind and blowing sand.

We did get out for some good sails and the winds were a test of equipment and teamwork. Manny crewed on a couple of passages south to Egyptian waters and found sailing conditions to be pretty much the same there. Early this year, he picked up a handheld anemometer and has had fun checking windspeed readings. A couple of weekends we dodged the local sailing races and marveled at how the young kids adapted to the conditions.



While the wind blew we tackled a few jobs on Yofy, resealing the opening ports, beefing up our forward chocks to prevent chaffing, putting four more coats on all the brightwork, as well as our regular maintenance work. I began to go through all our lockers and look at what we could reduce. After a few years onboard, even on a small boat, it's amazing what you can collect.

We found an interesting website
that has an animated map of the current wind speeds around the globe. (Click on any wind currents and the windspeed is displayed.) While it was fun to check out areas that were suffering more wind than us, we think this could be an interesting addition for passage planning.

In January we had a couple of good rainsqualls that brought our year's rainfall in a couple of hours. The wind lingered and temperatures remained cool but we still hadn't had any real southern winds - the winter storms of Eilat. Then a couple of weeks ago, while we were up north for Passover holidays, we got a call from a friend. He reported black skies and very strong winds. "Is someone looking after Yofy?" he asked.

There is nothing worse than being far away and hearing about bad weather at your boat's berth. We know that the section of the Eilat marina where Yofy lies is well protected, but this sounded like a bad storm. We called marina neighbours and Dima who looks after Yofy for us. Everybody seemed to think it was just a line squall.



When we returned to Yofy, the next day we heard many stories of the storm. Wind speeds were clocked at over 50 knots in the gusts. Two boats suffered serious damage from surge in the outer basin. Others had ripped biminis and one of Yofy's newly replaced chocks had pulled out. We got off lightly but this is just another reminder to never take Mother Nature for granted.

With the arrival of May we are watching weather patterns more closely. We have some sea trials to do and then a delivery up through the Suez Canal. Before we know it, summer will be upon us and it will be time for another Mediterranean adventure.