By late afternoon the rain let up and we went out to the "Rose and Crown," the pub we had adopted, as is our usual custom (or perhaps they had adopted us).
Sunday dawned fair with a blustery northwest wind, and we waited a little for the storm to move further away and for the wind to knock the southerly sea

We made pretty good time, and by Monday evening we were well into the Gulf Stream. Later that evening we slowed down a little, as the wind was west-southwest and gusting to 40 knots. The cause of the wind and seas was another low moving down the coast, and we decided Tuesday evening to get south as fast as we could, by-passing Bermuda, to get as far away from the low as possible.

Fortunately, it was about time for our daily weather check with Herb Hilgenberg, and he reminded us about steering with a drogue, which I had done before, but not with a boat this size or in these conditions. I rigged a drogue out of a folding chair and a piece of plywood (With its 4-legged bridle it looked like a tiny trawl door.), and we were able to make way under control. We could not steer far enough south of east to get to Bermuda, however, so we hove to in order to wait for a wind shift after the front we were under went by. Herb was very helpful and made radio contact with us every 3 hours. He also reported our situation regularly to the Coast Guard at Norfolk and to Bermuda Radio.

Mark, of Bermuda Yacht Services, invited us to their Christmas party that very evening, so we had a very pleasant and social introduction to St. George's.

Fortunately, a Skype call to Dave Wyllie at Lyman-Morse established that they would be happy to make a new rudder and could get right on it, so with a flurry of emailed drawings and questions that was settled.

The next job was to arrange our trip back to the US for our big family Christmas. We had intended to be in the BVI by this time and to fly back from Tortola, but we managed to get about the last two seats on a flight to New York on December 24th and a return a few days later. With that arranged, all we had to do was wait, explore St. George's, and keep the boat safe in the procession of gales that swept over Bermuda. The weather was a matter of some concern, as we had no steering, of course, and we had winds pretty steadily in the 30-knot range, with gusts to 40 or 50, but our anchors (with a lot of scope) held well and we stayed right where we were.

It was a pleasure to walk around St. George's again and show its tiny alleys and old houses to Barbara. It is a town I know well, but I didn't quite realize how thoroughly it shuts down in the winter, with carols booming out from the Town Hall over the empty square. It was nice to see the preparations for Christmas at St. Peters, with the crèche set up and evergreens hung about the old cedar walls.

On the 23rd we moved the boat for safe-keeping to one of Steve Hollis's moorings, and early in the morning of the 24th we were off to the airport and our flight to New York. We spent a very pleasant time with family members both in New York City and Connecticut, and on the 29th we flew back to Bermuda.

We tried to take different bus routes each time, and in that way saw quite a lot of the island. The bus rides themselves were fun, with the little busses whipping around corners and different people getting on and off.

There are many good restaurants, and we had lunch out each trip. We even spent part of one afternoon watching some of the European soccer championship on television.

After Christmas the weather improved a little, and one day we had a call on the radio from Bermuda Yacht Services. It appeared that the next day, Tuesday, January 5, a break in the weather was expected, and that would be a good day to tow us to the other end of Bermuda, where there was a yard with a travel lift large enough for us.

The Dockyard is an amazing place. It is a collection of stone buildings laid out like a fortress, built by Britain after the American Revolution deprived them of a strong presence on the west coast of the Atlantic.

The idea was to create a Gibraltar-like base not vulnerable to attack from land or sea where ships could be repaired and provisioned (and later coaled). there are huge halls where all parts of a ship, from spars to flags, were made and stored. There are huge gunpowder magazines in the inner fortress, along with storage buildings for ships' cannon and other armaments.

After the Dockyard was no longer useful to the Royal Navy (in the 50s, I think) it was more-or-less abandoned, except for a former barracks that was used as a prison. Now, however, its development has been contracted to a private company and the place is a hive of activity, with a shopping mall, restaurants, artisans' workshops and studios, and even a movie theater.

Here all Bermudian government vessels, pilot boats, police boats, tugs and ferries, are maintained, and in a separate shop navigational buoys are painted and repaired. It is a busy place.

The Camber is also the location of the travel lift belonging to West End Yachts, yet another business in the old buildings. There we would be hauled out so I could bolt on the new rudder, but let's not get ahead of the story.

The guys in the fab shop at Lyman-Morse finished the rudder ahead of schedule, but the freight service they (L-M) used has serious delusions of adequacy. Instead of simply trucking the rudder to Logan and putting it on a direct flight, they sent it via Philadelphia, where it spent 2 days. Then came the most frustrating part; the rudder was on Bermuda, but not available to us through some paperwork mixup, for three more days!

Meanwhile, we enjoyed life in the Dockyard, where there is a vibrant live-aboard community, a good pub, and several good restaurants. I found I was always a little on edge, however. It is difficult to relax when one's boat is crippled, unable to react if there is some kind of emergency.

We uncrated the rudder and Doug gave me a corner of his shop to paint it. The epoxy primer and barrier coat we used have 4-hour recoat times, so every 4 hours, there I was again, in a white Tyvek suit, daubing away.

After two days of painting the rudder was ready to go, and on the third day (Friday, the 15th) we worked the boat across the Camber into the travel lift slip and Doug hauled us out.

As usual, the wind was at gale force, so we waited through the weekend and were not sorry. We liked Dockyard and weren't in a hurry to leave, but we did want to get south. On Monday night Doug came aboard for a last round of drinks, and on Tuesday we set out for St. George's. That night we had a wonderful dinner with Steve and Suzanne Hollis, great food and great talk, and at first light on Wednesday we hoisted the dinghy and blew our horn for departure.

At 08:15 on Jaunary 20th we took our departure from the sea buoy off St. George's and started on the 5-day run to Tortola, with a light northerly wind and swell, ideal conditions.