35 knots of wind and cristal clear sky

We waited for a squall to pass then lifted anchor and left Medregal for Laguna Grande, 14 mile trip taking about 3 hours. The wind blew with about 15 knots and not knowing how much it would blow we just pulled the jib out, probably a good idea as just 5 miles along the coast the wind was swept down the tall hills and created at certain places a strong funnel effect. We started getting gusts up to 25 knots and decided to reef the jib. About 7 miles before Laguna Grande the swell, started beating against
the hull and splashing water into the cockpit. We started to head towards shore to get more protection from the swell. The wind now blew 30 with gusts to 35 knots and Paradise was doing up to 7.2 knots. At least we were going with it so it wasn't all too bad, now that the swells were behind us as well. Coming into Laguna Grande was a big surprise seeing nothing but white caps rushing towards us, the wind was blowing a steady 30 and slowed us down to 2.3 knots even though we ran high rpm's. Sid thought
that maybe we had a transmission problem and instead of heading to our usual anchor spot we chose the first bite into the big bay to drop the hook, (later Sid checked the motor and luckily it was just the wind that had slowed us down). Here at least we were protected behind the small hill from the direkt force of the wind, but gusts still whipped us from side to side and the near bay sounded like a raging river. Concentrating on the anchoring procedure I didn't pay attention to what was going on
in the cockpit until we were securely anchored I noticed the cockpit covered in black. Ohmygosh, I have never seen so many flies, they were everywhere. Sid couldn't believe his eyes either as he stepped into the cockpit and saw everything covered with thousands of flies and the war started. No matter how much we sprayed it seemed every fly that fell 20 would take it's place. The cockpit turned into a gruesome battlefield which seemed the flies had the upper hand. Time to bring the real weapon out
the net I made for the cockpit and the sticky fly strips you hang up which usually just catch your hair instead of flies (or
Sid's sleave as I am writing this LOL). You should have seen this, the second it was hanging in the cockpit flies were fighting each other to get to the sticky tape. The buzzing of all of them getting stuck on that gooey stuff was amazingly loud and oh so annoying, it filled up in just a few minutes. At the end we won the battle and sat comfortably inside the netting tent sipping on a cocktail and watching mama goat with two babies hop from one rock to the next and up he hill.