Every morning and evening at 7AM the boats on the rally turn their Single Side Band (SSB) radio on a predefined frequency to do roll call and find out issues or questions sailors might have. On the morning meeting on Wednesday we learned that the cold front was going to lie on our path with winds of 30-40 knots later that evening. At the urge of Nancy we set our storm jib (a small sail designed for heavy weather) in the mid afternoon. We also set out our main but reefed it to about 50%. By 5PM the sky got dark and we could see in our radar squalls, large monstrous looking bodies approaching our boat. We strategized where it would be better to head toward and finally settled on a South East path. However, we were soon "sandwiched" between 3 large squalls and one finally hit us. Captain D (as we are now calling Dennis) was at the helm and screamed, just like the captain in his favorite movie Captain Ron, "she wants to go to windward! We need to take the main sail down now!!" We all sprung into action as we were going to have to take the main sail in very high (over 30 knots) downwind point of sail and this sail is to be taken down when facing the wind. It was hard but we did it! The boat handled the storm for the next 12 hours beautifully with no damage in winds that went as high as 45 knots, save for a batten that came through the top of the main as it was creased when we roller-furled it under so much pressure. This was a very challenging night as the waves were very high 10-12 feet high and the winds were in the 20-32 ranges. Sleeping was nearly impossible and we were all exhausted and looking not so well.