I must have jinxed Nika with my "Red Letter Day" blog entry yesterday? A great day was followed by a shocker! A good friend of mine said I should make my blog entries a bit "grittier", so I'll try herewith.

We started the second day with lightening winds which required us to use the motor for several hours. At least it gave me the chance to make pancakes for breakfast.

We were thinking ourselves fortunate to have lucked on to a kind and gentle weather window in which to transit the Columbian coast when the wind began to increase to 25 knots about 5:00PM. By 8:00PM after a bright red sunset (sailors delight??) and as the kids were going down to bed, we were getting a few indications that we weren't quite off the hook yet...

Firstly the high wind alarm, which I'd set at 30 knots, started beeping - at first sporadically and then continually. The remedy: reef the poled-out jib and main and raise the alarm level to 35 knots, and then to 38 knots.

We fully reefed away the mainsail, further reduced jib and removed the whisker pole. We also tied back the bimini for the first time as we noticed it was beginning to tear. At a reduced speed of only 7 knots, Nika was handling very well but was getting pummelled by the rogue waves which were coming about every 5 minutes in groups of three. George, our autopilot, was coping well until at 10:00PM, every sailors worst fears were realised when there was a tremendous BANG!! emanating from the rudder region.

Naturally, I jumped to the wheel and switched off the autopilot, believing that the rudder had broken off yet hoping/praying that I could somehow salvage the situation by hand-steering. In my haste, I must have pushed the wrong button for I couldn't turn the autopilot off to 'Standby' mode; so ensued a battle between JD and George as to who was actually steering the hapless Nika. There was no winner until Hels arrived, somewhat bleary-eyed (as she'd been 'off-watch' down below) and took the wheel while I eventually figured out that George needed some serious button-pushing to get him out of "Calibration Mode" and into "Standby Mode". All the while we were at risk of being "pooped" by a rogue wave from behind.

Another ghastly BANG!! caused me to dive down into the Lazarette (locker in the back of the boat behind the kids bedroom where all rudder equipment is located) with torch in hand to determine how much damage, torn metal, shattered fibreglass, we'd wreaked on Nika. As I lay curled up like a contortionist in this dark, loud, godforsaken place, I was surprised/baffled/relieved to find that everything appeared to be normal.

We guessed that the Autopilot Drive Unit had spat the dummy and sheared a gear so we were facing hand-steering for the next 14 hours till we reached Cartegena. This may not sound daunting until you realise that Hels and I were already tired from the previous night (we never sleep well on the first night of a passage) and tonight we were both going to need to stay up together (no 'off-watches') in case of any emergencies.

At one stage I looked back at Helen on the wheel as three really HUGE and breaking waves smashed us in succession. I think Hels was OK until she saw the look of terror on my face - I was the one looking backwards and could see the waves just before they hit us; Helen's coping strategy was to look straight ahead and deal only with what was in front of you - not a bad strategy I think. I'm sure none of you would be surprised as I confirm that Hels did marvellously well - I continue to be amazed at her steeliness and tenacity in the face of challenges.

With the high wind alarm continuing to go off every couple of minutes and the rogue waves every other few minutes, we thought we were going OK, until at 0200 this morning we heard the BANG!! a couple more times. "What IS that noise and where is it coming from?". The answer was revealed when I removed the rear seat to expose the top rudder bearing and could see that it was moving some 5-10mm side-to-side due to a sheared screw. I tightened the 4 friction nuts a bit and hoped/prayed that it would hold until morning which it did. Having now determined the cause of the dreadful BANG!!, we could now revert to George, the autopilot, (after some trepidation) and get some much-needed catnaps.

The long and short of it is that this part of the Colombian coastline is a well-known black spot at this time of the year, notorious amongst the sailors we've met. But you have to pass through it if you wish to get to Cartegena or, indeed the San Blas Islands and henceforth, the Panama Canal. This was the worst conditions we've had in the five months we've been cruising and I guess we're better for the experience and fortunately suffered no damage. In the safety and tranquillity of this marina in Cartegena, it doesn't seem so bad and we're even happier than usual to be safely tucked away for the night.

What about the kids in all this? They awoke this morning in their usual good spirits and said "Storm? What storm?".