Just when you’ve gotten used to the steady winds and incessant heat of the Med, the end of summer is upon you. Rather like summer for us on the east coast of the US who would start bracing for hurricanes, the Med gets weird this time of year.
The heat of the water (unprecedented temperatures this year) combined with the fronts blowing through can create some seriously dangerous storms. We had two days of southerly winds and decided to run north to Argostoli. Those days would also bring very unsettled weather. The run from Methoni back to Katakolon was quite good. Our only excitement was watching a neighboring catamaran blow his spinnaker as they weren’t paying attention to the growing winds (we simply left our main and jib up, reefing when needed). But the morning we were to leave Katakolon, the weather looked messy. I thought the front was going to pass us, so we decided to leave the anchorage and motor. Unfortunately the storm changed track and headed for us. That, combined with the white caps we could see in the distance, and the wobbly lightning rod at the top of our mast had us turn around in a hurry. Once back at anchor, we waited for the front to pass, Trip went up the mast to address the lightning rod as well as a wind transducer problem, and then we were off again.
We were conscious of lots of storms in the area, but the worst of the lightning was past us (little did we know there had been a water spout in our path the day before). We were hard on it, close hauled, and reefed for most of the day, but we made it safely to southern Kefalonia in the wee hours of the morning after a good soaking by a rain squall.
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