We've learnt a new word over the last couple of days - Medicane - the Mediterranean equivalent of a hurricane apparently. We're not sure if this has just been made up by the media or if it's a recognised term. Anyway, we've been hiding from it!

Looking at our weather aps (and we use quite a few) we have chosen a good location as there are much stronger winds a few miles to the north and south of us. Tuesday here was reasonable with nothing more than 20 knot gusts. Wednesday night was the worst period for us, the winds were consistently in the high 20's with gusts up to 37knots. There were over 100 yachts anchored in Vlikho Bay near Nidri with us and we watched around 30 of them drag their anchors during the night and have to reset in the dark and wind. We had put out 55m of chain in 6m of water and made sure it was well dug into the muddy bottom. We sat there solidly throughout the blasts and were tired but comfortable the next morning.

Since then the winds have been fairly light with occasional gusts in the low 20's. Just 9 miles north of here in Levkas they had 50 knots on Thursday night whilst we were sleeping peacefully in 10 knots. Zakinthos just 20 miles to the south of us is reporting 40 knots this morning, we have 10-15 knots.

It was Chris's birthday yesterday and we were relaxed enough last night to invite a couple of neighbouring boats for a drink. We had a pleasant 3 hours chatting with Pat & Tony of 'Full Flight' who are long term live-aboards with many miles under the keel and Caroline and John of 'Loulouditzi' who have bought her recently and had a much more difficult time on Wednesday moored on a quay only half a mile north. After they left around 21.00 we had a late meal in Elena's tavern nearby and got a good night's sleep.

It appears we have been lucky and chosen a good spot to sit out the winds, we are seeing reports of much stronger stuff from other 'yachties' on the forums of the Cruising Association. Areas to the south and east of Greece still have the worst to come over the coming hours with some Force 11/up to 60 knots being forecasted .

Photo: we are back to having connection problems with photos. giving up now after multiple attempts so this will be text only for a while