Strong winds

On Monday morning we sent the outboard up to the yard for repair, but they reported that it needed major work doing and advised us to get a new one, so we ordered a new Suzuki 6hp four-stroke at a ridiculous Greek price. It was specially annoying because we had intended to get a new two-stroke inTurkey, where they are still sold and we could get the tax back, but that is life. When the outboard arrived on Wednesday it turned out to be a long shaft so they had to send it back.
Kai played with Dionysus and Kostas on Monday and they discovered that at the back of the cafe was a PS3, so Kai invested this week's pocket money in playing on the PS3 with his Greek friends. When his money ran out they let them go on playing free, and of course Kai decided that he wanted to stay in Lakki for a couple of days, supposedly to play with Dionysus and Kostas, but most of the time playing with them on the PS3. Lin and I could stand no more of is, so we decided to leave on Wednesday morning, though the forecast was for northerly winds force 6-7, so our options were limited.
We sailed round to the other side of Leros, to Vromolithos, which we naively expected to be sheltered. We anchored in the most sheltered spot, only to be told that we had to move because this was the swimming area. We anchored at the other end of the bay, with a kedge out from the stern to keep us off a moored fishing boat, and Kai went up the mast to reattach our flag halyard, which had come down when the string on the old Greek flag had broken.

The wind got up in the afternoon and the fisherman came by to check his boat. He was pleased to see that we had a kedge out to keep us off his boat, but insisted on relaying it for us and warned us that the holding was bad there as the sand was very soft, but both anchors were buried deep in the sand so we thought we would be OK, but we decided to eat on board rather than going to Dimitri's taverna.
We set the depth alarm and went to bed. Lin woke up to the howling wind to find that we had swung very close to the fishing boat and the depth was down to 2.5 metres - the alarm buzzer had not worked. When we pulled on the kedge we found that it came straight up - the fisherman had dropped it on a thick bed of weed - so we decided that we had to reanchor, eventually finding a comfortable spot after one failure, though we also found that we had a loose connection in the nav lights - more things to fix.
Next morning the wind was still blowing at 25 knots in the anchorage, so we decided to go up to Lipsi, motor sailing upwind in a steady force 6 with a double-reefed main and no genoa in big seas, arriving at Lipsi and getting on the quay at lunchtime. Kai soon made some new friends on the quay and disappeared until dinner time. After dinner he shot off to play football with his German friends. When we wanted to go to bed Simon set off to find him, but another festival was under way, with music and dancing. Simon dragged Kai away and as we got back Becky phoned to say that Andrew had asked her to marry him and she had accepted, so there was much rejoicing and Kai was determined to celebrate by going back to the festival and dancing until midnight, when we eventually collapsed into bed.