The wind was seldom dead astern, but we found that with a staysail poled out to leeward and the genoa to windward we could sail comfortably with the wind at about 20 degrees on the quarter. We switched between the storm jib and regular staysail, with the genoa partly furled to match their respective areas, depending on wind and sea conditions. With the drogue adjusted to balance the rig, the autopilot kept us more or less on course once we had adjusted its “gain” to a maximum. The constant whirring of motor and gears as the wheel was spun from lock to lock would impose a great deal of wear and use a lot of juice, and we could only hope that it kept working. Every now and then the autopilot lost control with a fit of beeps, which sometimes we could recover with a sharp tug on one of the steering lines, but often the boat would round up broadside onto the wind and we’d have to back one of the headsails to turn her downwind again. We could maintain control better by hand steering as well as increase the speed by half a knot, but we couldn’t keep that up for long.

Our request for extra diesel hadn’t been forgotten, with the result that Father Christmas arrived a week early, wake-boarding in an inflatable dinghy on the end of a long line behind the kiwi yacht Tuatara. On the first reasonably calm day since the incident, Santa – alias Alan – Claus, with considerable skill and guts and lots of energetic rowing, manoeuvred himself alongside Egret and heaved over two drums of diesel and a sack of goodies, including a freshly baked loaf of bread, some chocolate cake and a Christmas card. Declining to stay for a cup of tea, he nevertheless managed to get a glimpse of what remained of our rudder, before being hauled back on board his mother ship by Jean and Juan. We were overwhelmed by their generous and thoughtful action. The next day we celebrated 1000 miles to go: over half way.

Soon after losing the rudder, we had begun to make the most of the facility to send and receive e-mails via our SSB radio. We contacted family members, Falmouth Coastguard and our insurance company; then set about working out options for repair of the rudder. Andy, of Spruce, at anchor in Grenada, initiated research via the Coconut Telegraph into recommended repair locations. Our destination had originally been Barbados, but after weighing up such factors as ease of approach from seawards, the suitability of shore-side facilities and the availability of skilled tradesmen, we plumped for St. Lucia. Clive, the owner of the Sweden Yachts 38 “Cosmic Dancer”, was there having just finished the ARC, and he did a great deal of leg-work talking to the boatyard manager and lining up a surveyor. Mark, of Macushla, moored at Las Palmas, managed to get a structural drawing of the rudder from Sweden Yachts, and started discussions with them about supplying a new one.

The story of our plight seemed to be spreading wider and wider, and it was often hard to know how to deal with offers of help from unknown but well intentioned people. It often takes several attempts to get a connection to one of service provider Sailmail’s stations and then the transmission speed can be very slow, and for quite a while I was spending most of my night watches at the computer receiving, reading, responding to and sending e-mails, somewhat to the detriment of sailing the boat, keeping a good look-out or simply resting. Fortunately the flow of information eventually subsided, and we thank everyone who gave us the benefit of their time and experience, and also Sailmail for allowing us so much extra airtime free of charge.