Fair Winds and Following Seas - NOT!

"Fair winds and following seas" is a mariner's blessing.  Well, on Wednesday, July 17 and Thursday, July 18, we experienced neither.  This is Bernice, and I am going to tell you my version of the last 2 days.  On Wednesday morning, while anchored in Hydra, Bernice and Mark woke up at 6:00am to the sound of a fierce wind.   A number of boats had already left the site.  We were trying to figure out how to leave the site, because in addition to the anchor, we had lines to shore wrapped around rocks.  We needed to get the lines free and bring up the anchor.  Any solution that Captain Mark came up with was not acceptable to First Mate Bernice because it included FM Bernice going into the dinghy, getting to the rocks, unknotting the lines, getting the line in the dinghy, then rowing back out to the boat.  And in the swift current, these solutions made Bernice uneasy.  I was truly missing my sailing buddies, Alan and Steve, who would have done this task without a problem.  However, we came up with an acceptable solution that included Bernice using the lines to pull herself to the rock, unknotting them, and then being pulled back to the boat from the line still attached to the boat.  This was a much better solution.  We realized (along with the boat next to us), that one of the rocks (a huge one), was moving up and down as a result of the current- and that was the line that had most of the weight of the boat - yikes!   By 8:00 I managed to release all of the line including retrieving the  line left by the boat next to us when they  left their site.  The boat was still nearby, so we were able to get close enough to throw it back to them.  Whew, what a stressful morning!  I was really looking forward to a nice sail to Monemvassia.   Unfortunately, that was not be.  By 9:45 we reached open waters where no land was in sight.  We were sailing via chart maps.  The winds were gusty and strong and the seas had swells up to  10 feet high!  Really it was 4-5 feet high but I wanted to make sure you were still paying attention.  Anyway, it might have been OK if the swells were all going in the same direction, but they weren't.  They were coming at us from all directions and it was difficult sailing, difficult staying the course, and difficult trying not to toss our breakfast overboard.  However, we  managed to reach a speed of 8.1 knots (though we averaged about 5.5 knots).  By 12:30 we determined that we were not going to make it all of the way to Monemvassia and decided to head toward Kiparissi.  We arrived in Kiparissi by 2:30 and well, skipping over the gory details, suffice it to say that we did not have lunch until 4:30.  We were tired, stressed, and hungry.  Oh, by the way, have I mentioned that this has been a fabulous vacation so far?  Maybe I should have started with that.    I will end my tale here -- and I or another shipmate will write to you at a later time explaining why were are still here in Kiparissi instead of down in Monemvassia.