Elafonissos 29/06/2012

Open Blue
Tim & Manfreda Penfold
Fri 29 Jun 2012 15:37
Position 036:28:1N 022:58:5E

There was virtually no wind all the way down the coast to Point Maleas, so even though all the pilot books warned of the violent reputation of this Point, we approached it thinking everything was calm and we would just motor round. We should have heeded the warnings a bit better, because as soon as we started to change course around the point, gusts of wind started to appear out of nowhere. At first it wasn't too much of a problem but then the gusts started getting really strong. We had a full mainsail up and I didn't have time to safely reef or get it down, so we just tried to pre-empt where the gusts were coming from and try to run with them. It was a scary 20 minutes, and at one point we crash gybed and were stuck with the mainsail pinned against the running backstay on the wrong side. But we did get through it OK and we definitely felt like Point Maleas had taught us a lesson for being so complacent!
We anchored off an amazing beach at Elafonissos island and went to bed expecting to spend the next day playing on it.