Sao Francisco To Somewhere

A quick rundown of whats happened in the last 10 days, I will do a full story when things have settled down but right now have just got time for a quick summary. We left sao francisco a week last Sunday. The first 5 or 6 days were pretty dreadful - no wind at all, working against 1 or 2 knots of current. On a trip we had planned (and provisioned) for 4 or 5 days, we were barely half way there and looking at well over a week till we arrived. I think it was the thursay or friday when the pressured dropped a little, and wind picked up from the north, and we started making good progress. But by the afternoon the pressure plummeted. When the southerly wind first hit, it went off our wind-speed dial (over 50 knots). We ran away east in a strong force 9, at times storm force ten. In basic terms, it was pretty extreme survival conditions, and we were running off with bare poles (no sails up), and streaming warps to slow us down. It hit at 5pm, and we lasted till 2am until a pair of rouge waves hit the stern. The first threw me against the wheel, and john across the cockpit. The boat broached, and the second hit the hit and knocked Rebel down. As I am writing this, obviously the boat came back up, and in a condition to carry on running off. We continued until around 10am until it finally started calming to force 8, and then 7. We started making progress to the nearest port (where we are now - I don't know the name, some small port at the southern tip of Florionopolis), around 100 miles north. The weather hardly let up, and we ran off on a force 7, then had to beat in to 20 to 30 knots. We finally dropped anchor on monday morning. The weather has hardly calmed since, and today is the first time one of us has got ashore (I hitched a lift with a fisherman, hopefully i can cajoled another to take me back in a bit). We are phsyically fit, mentally still a bit shaken but nothing some good eating, sleeping, smoking and drinking won't fix. Assuming I can get back to the boat this afternoon with recovery supplies, we will spend the next couple of days holed up, and start taking stock of the situation. The boat is 90% still a boat, but until we have assessed our options its hard to say what this all means to the trip plans. Anywho thats the rough summary. And thanks to everyone for the happy birthday emails. It was certainly a memorable one!