"Red Alert: waves potentially 12 to 14 m high and strong winds. Potential disaster when peak wave heights coincide with high tide at 18:00 h," said the national weather forecast. Windguru showed waves of 8.5 m from 293º. Go figure.

I arrived at the marina at 14:00 h to participate in the excitement, maybe even watch the whole kit and caboodle float away in broken pieces. I'm not a masochist, but who would want to miss a show like that.

After rearranging the fenders, lashing the main and stay sails better and adding a few strategic dock lines, I waited inside doing nothing useful, occasionally popping my head out the companionway only to see harmless foam spraying over the breakwater. 

At about 16:00 the waves began to pound louder and the foam turned to green water - foamy sheets washing over the parking lot and into the marina.

This is how it looked at about 17:00 h, shot with my Rollei 415 action cam. Pedro who runs a café in town offered to edit my next film, it's that bad. Except for the waves toward the end.

A reader, Fernando, sent photographs of me making my escape.

Two marina dock fingers broke and that's about it.