With Medicane Ianos forecast to hit the Ionian area at the end of the week we decided to seek shelter in a marina. A medicane is a Mediterranean hurricane. The online booking system at Lefkas said they were fully booked so we thought we would head further north to Preveza. However, as we went past Lefkas we decided to pop in and try for a place, and as luck had it they had a place for one night. This would at least give us the opportunity to get another quote for a gantry. Again the Greek gods must have been with us as on Thursday morning they allowed us to stay for another 3 nights (the marina, not the gods!) which should see us through the ensuing storm!
So here we are, in Lefkas marina on pontoon F56, the wind is currently gusting 30 knots, its raining, the phones have just blasted off with emergency warnings and it’s due to get much worse over the next 3 days…. We’re going nowhere!
We use an app called Predictwind for our weather forecasts, which amongst other features, shows as a table wind speeds, and gusts (on Beaufort scale) for 4 forecast models. The screen shot below shows how difficult it is to forecast Ionian weather. Yes it is showing force 12!
Well it was windy with gusts well over 40kts particular early Friday morning and very wet with several inches of rain falling over the 3 days. Just 6 miles south in Nidri we heard that a boat sank and much worse further south on Ithaca and Kephalonia we heard that several boats sank or dragged their anchor in onto rocks. Apparently a Sunsail flotilla skipper and engineer two 19 year olds worked tirelessly throughout the night. First getting all the flotilla crews to a hotel then not only saving their own boats but other private boats also.
It wasn’t till Sunday morning that things got back to normal, albeit a bit cooler.
