Well it has been an interesting day. We had strong winds from the early hours and being in a marina the sound of the wind through the masts and rigging of hundreds of yachts was quite deafening at times especially the fenders against the hull. Muskrat, being sandwiched between large yachts that were as wide as they were long,  didn’t move at all and being stern onto the wind was, for a change, a blessing because our stern lines were under tension so we didn’t roll and swing as much as the yachts that were bows to the wind.

We secured our wind generator to stop it flying off the stern and put restraining lines on the sola panels to stop them coming adrift and went to bed hoping that we had done all could to prevent any damage.

The day dawned and the whole yacht was covered with very fine red sand that had got into everything, the winches, the genoa cars, the car on the boom, the entire yacht was just covered, as was the highly polished charter yachts around us! The wind continued gusting into the high 40s at least so we checked everything again and decided that a day of culture was needed around Kos. Amazingly in land, the wind was hardly noticeable, so we soon forgot the storm raging around us as we visited some of the sites.

Some of the archeological sites around Kos are amazing. Some have been reconstructed by the Italians during their occupation but others you can just walk amongst with no restrictions at all. We do appear to have somewhat of a jinks for visiting sites though. The last time we were here was a Tuesday and we found that everything was closed on a Tuesday, so with this in mind we made sure we were visiting on days other than a Tuesday. This time though, we are visiting out of season, so again a lot of the sites appear to be closed until the 1st of May! Never the less there was still a lot to see.

As the castle was closed we decided to visit the archeological museum, unfortunately on our way there the Greek pavements, that we had so carefully negotiated all the time we had been in Greece, finally took its toll on Chris and he took a nasty fall over some boulders that were meant to stop traffic entering a pedestrian only plaza. He fell on his outstretched hand, grazed his shin and bruised his knees. He jumped up and walked on but it soon became apparent that he needed to sit down to take stock. By this time his right hand and wrist was hurting and his palm of his left hand and the graze to his right shin was bleeding. We sat down on a park bench for a while to take stock and to treat the graze and he said that he was ok to visit the museum. We had no sooner started our visit in the museum when he obviously went into shock and needed to sit down again, almost fainting. After a while it became apparent that we would not be able to carry on with the visit, so we left the museum and slowly made our way back to Muskrat.

Over the next few hours Chris’s right had continued to swell and got more painful so we decided to visit the local hospital for an x-ray. less than a hour later he had been seen, x-rayed and treated and we were on our way back to Muskrat safe in the knowledge that he hadn’t broken his wrist. The efficient and friendly care we received in a basic local hospital was very comforting. They accepted the GHIC card so there was nothing to pay and we even got the x-ray to take away. The wind is still howling in the rigging tonight but hopefully it will calm down towards the morning.