Starry Night

After our first storm, we had one day. One day of calm winds and moderate seas. The sun was out and it would have been a day we would have really enjoyed if we didn't know there was another storm coming that night.
We spend our day preparing the boat and ourselves. Everything was tied in, food was set out, the lee cloths on the beds that prevent us from falling out were tightened. We reviewed everything again with the kids: you may not get out of bed unless you have permission (it was too dangerous for the kids to be climbing in the cabin), we can only have snack foods that we can hold in one hand (too dangerous to cook and you need the other hand to hold on to the boat), never wake someone who is off-shift from the cockpit, etc. Then we went to bed.
The storm began around 2am. It came in fairly quickly and was at full force by around 4am. This time the winds were around 35-40kn sustained with much, much higher gusts. There was a gust in that storm registered here in Bermuda of about 74 knots. T
here's no is no way of knowing if we hit that high, but I believe we did, or were close. Bob had one gust pick him up and move him around the cockpit. Thankfully, everyone was and always is tethered in, so he could not have been blown overboard.
We were running downwind during this storm, so the motion in the boat was not pounding it, so we had only the occasional deafening boom as water broke over the boat. The only sound that I can compare it to would be having a concrete wall fall and hit the side of the boat.
Bob and Albert took turns at the helm for about 18-20 hours, sometimes getting an hour or so of rest, sometimes none at all.
Bob and Albert can speak for their own experiences. Bob told me that there were a few bad moments, but he eventually got to the point where he was enjoying surfing the boat down the massive waves. He knew he could keep the boat going and he knew the boat would take care of us.
He was exhausted, but able to deal with it.
This next part is very difficult for me to write. I have always considered myself pretty resilient and fairly strong. I've had many times in life where I was afraid, but just did what had to be done. This time, I couldn't. I was terrified.
I've always been afraid of drowning. It is one of my primal fears, I think. Being in a boat during that storm seemed to push me into that mode. I was absolutely terrified. There was no way I was able to take my turn at the helm or help above deck. I did my best to keep everyone fed and to keep the kids safe. My feelings about this are very mixed at this point. I am very angry at myself for letting myself be that afraid, for not pushing through it to help out and for making it so much harder on Albert and Bob.
All of those things I will need to deal with soon, because we can't stay here forever and we need a plan to move on.
Back to the story:
On Friday evening, about 9pm, the winds had subsided to about 25-30kn, and the seas were about 10-15 feet. I was able to take the helm for a while so Bob and Albert could both rest. We were about 30-40 miles north of Bermuda at this point. Then there was a THUD, and we had no steerage.
One of the worst things that can happen in a boat is to have no steerage. We also had the additional problems of a cracked forestay boom and a frozen jib furler. Basically, we had no ability to set any foresails up.
Luckily, we had plenty of searoom, which means we weren't about to be blown or surfed onto the reefs surrounding Bermuda
Bob was able to climb in the cockpit locker and discover that our steering assembly bolts had come off and it had dropped off our rudder post (our wheel was not connected to the rudder). It happened in such a way that we couldn't use the emergency tiller. But, Bob was able to repair it after about 1 hour of very hard labor, and we were on our way again.
About 10 miles outside of Bermuda, just outside the approach to the channel, our steering froze. We could not move the helm at all. After a very stressful few minutes, Bob tried disconnecting the autopilot from the rudder. The autopilot had malfunctioned and was not allowing the rudder to be removed. Worked just fine after being disconnected.
Finally, we had no other issues and made it into Bermuda Harbor, which I will save for part 3, because that was an amazing lifting experience and deserves to be told as such.