We watched the disappearing shoreline where we lived for six weeks. How small it seemed compared to the open sea in front of us! Farewell, Volos, the Internet café down the street, the helpful shopkeepers, the international boating neighbors, Captain Steve and Jenny.

We rounded the harbor entrance, the motor throbbing. Janet and I were still congratulating each other when we noticed dark clouds rolling in from the north. Thirty minutes later, the sky turned black. We stared uneasily, then with alarm, at the dense sheets of rain pouring in the north, then around us, and finally directly on us from above. We continued to motor as the wind increased, whipping the water into whitecaps. I shut down the motor and just ran with the wind, doing three knots with no sails. Janet steered SailingActs as she pitched and heaved in the squall, while I went below to check our bearing and position on the chart. I'd never been seasick in my life, but on this day of many firsts, I got seasick instantly. This was not good.

We needed to get some sail up to steady the boat. I managed, in 45 minutes of nauseous struggle with the wind and the waves battering the front deck, to raise the storm jib, then the mizzen, and SailingActs settled down as we picked up speed. I pulled on the foul-weather gear Janet gave me for Christmas the year before and ploughed through the torrents of rain and great gusts of wind, peals of thunder and bolts of lightning. I realized, with gratitude, that we had purchased an extremely seaworthy boat.

Then the squall passed, the sun came out, and for the final hour that day, we followed the course we had plotted over waters we had never before crossed, on a boat we had never before sailed. We were heading for the island of Palaio Trikeri, some 16 miles from Volos. The charts made sense, the descriptions were accurate, and we found the harbor -- full of charter boats. As in Volos, when we had pulled away from the wharf, everyone in the harbor seemed to be watching us as we drew near. Not wanting to demonstrate to the spectators that we had never dropped SailingActs' anchor before, we decided on a secluded anchorage just west of the harbor. Janet released the brake on the windlass, and the anchor dropped but did not seem to hold.

"Let's try over there," I suggested to Janet, pointing to a patch of sandy bottom we could see through the crystal-clear water. "I'll push the button to run the windlass and raise the anchor. Then I'll move the boat and you release it when we get directly above that spot."

I went back to the cockpit and pushed the anchor-windlass button. Nothing happened. I tried again harder, jiggling then pounding the button. There was no movement or noise from the anchor windlass. Did Captain Steve forget to tell me something?

Although Palaio Trikeri is a very small and rather remote island, and even though the anchorage we chose was even more remote, there were a couple of houses on the cliffs overlooking the little bay in which we were struggling. One of the island's few inhabitants watched the whole nautical circus with binoculars from the porch of his house above the little bay. Others joined him. I ended up cranking endless yards of chain up with my hands, which I thought were quite tough by this time, but I had blisters before I finished the job. We finally got the anchor up, found another anchorage on our chart, and headed toward it with the hope that in this one there would be no spectators. If it's this difficult to anchor smoothly, I thought to myself, what will it be like trying to back into a crowded berth? Tomorrow we're going to do some practice maneuvers, I vowed.