It was early Monday morning that Herbert set off into Beaufort, North Carolina, in our inflatable dinghy to locate a welder to repair our shattered steering arm. If he could get it fixed right away, we would leave that day and still have a fighting chance to make it to Hilton Head, South Carolina for my mother's surprise birthday party two days later.

Once this latest breakdown had scuttled our planned Sunday departure, we lost any hope of making the secret Tuesday rendezvous we had planned with my brothers and sister and their families. Now the best we could hope for was to arrive on the actual day of my mother's birthday and hope to somehow round up the rest of the gang to carry off the surprise entrance into Hilton Head Harbour we had been planning for so many months.

We had been studying the forecasts carefully over the past several days, and the favourable weather was still holding out for at least two more days. However there was a prediction of gale force winds for Thursday and Friday, so if we didn t leave on Monday, it was quite possible we wouldn t make it to Hilton Head to see the rest of the family at all.

So while Herbert attended to the repair of the steering arm, the kids and I prepared the boat for an ocean passage, putting everything away securely in preparation for the large ocean waves we might encounter. Herbert arrived back on the boat at noon, with triumph gleaming in his eyes. The arm was repaired all he had to do was re-install it and we could he off within a few hours. He immediately set to work.

In the meantime, Michael and I dinghied to a nearby marina and placed one final call to my parents. Actually the call was to George Slepchuk, a person who doesn t exist. We had arranged this imaginary friend so that I would have a way of sending secret messages to my father. Dad had let the hotel reception people in on our little plan, and they agreed to hold messages for this mythical Mr. Slepchuk and pass them discretely on to Dad. Because we were lying to Mom about being delayed in Norfolk, anything I told Mom and Dad directly was suspect, but messages for Mr. Slepchuk carried the true information for Dad's benefit alone.

Feeling like James Bond, I instructed the giggling receptionist to inform Mr. Slepchuk that we were leaving Beaufort immediately and would arrive in Hilton Head Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning, depending on the conditions offshore. Plan A, which involved meeting up with the other surprise birthday guests on Tuesday and smuggling them aboard Northern Magic, was off.

It was now up to Dad to invent a new plan B for a Wednesday arrival, and a plan C for a Thursday arrival. How we would find out about plans B and C , I didn't yet know.

Finally around 3 p.m. we carefully began negotiating our way out of the shallow Beaufort Harbour into the Atlantic. As the drawbridge lifted for us and the great ocean opened up ahead, we felt hopeful that we might be able to pull off this surprise after all, even after all our mechanical troubles. We had just entered the deeper waters of the Atlantic, however, when we detected an all too familiar squeal. It couldn't be - the fanbelt! I looked to Herbert in despair.

"We'll have to go back", I said.

No, he shot back with utter confidence and certainty, I can fix this. Let s carry on.

In the more than twenty years we have spent together, I have learned better than to question this particular steely look of determination, so on Captain s orders, we proceeded into the ocean without further debate. Off went the motor, up went the sails, and open went the engine compartment. We were all too familiar with this routine. Except this time, Herbert had finally discovered the cause of all our fanbelt troubles - a misaligned alternator. He and Michael spent the next several hours grinding away at the alternator s mounting bracket while Jonathan and I had a delightful time in the cockpit watching for dolphins as Northern Magic lazily sailed in an easterly direction into the ocean. We stayed that way until dark, chatting, cuddling and talking to the many dolphins who showed their friendly faces to us, creating for me one of my very best memories of the trip so far.

When the fanbelt was finally (and truly) fixed, the motor came back on and we headed more resolutely south toward Hilton Head. It was a disappointment to resume our southbound course under motor power, because the comfortable rising and falling with the waves that occurs under sail is completely destroyed when motoring directly into them. We made great progress, but over the active dissent of my stomach.

The 300 mile passage was uneventful but for one exciting interlude. Herbert was on his watch on deck at around 5 a.m. Tuesday. I was sleeping, in the middle of a very welcome break, when some jarring words seized me and carried me out of a pleasant dream.

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! She s going down! She s going down! The words rang out like shots. I stumbled over to the radio, hitting my head and immediately missing the warn blankets I had left behind. Over the next minutes, a real life adventure unfolded over the marine radio. My pen flew furiously over a scrap of paper trying to record the details. A small fishing boat named Lucky Lure had gotten its anchor line tangled around its propeller, yanking out the propeller shaft and leaving a gaping hole under the boat s waterline. The boat sank within minutes, and its owner, a fisherman named James Rachels, had made this one desperate radio call, blurting out his coordinates before abandoning ship.

Instantly the airwaves were full of the voices of other sailors coming to his assistance. Not recognizing that they were Loran coordinates rather than longitude and latitude, Herbert and I were unable to make sense out of the position Lucky Lure had given. By our reckoning, she was hundreds of miles away. We were, however, quite wrong.

We heard several fast fishing boats announce they were setting out at top speed. A few minutes later we were, coincidentally enough, passed by a boat going by at at least 30 knots. Then the Coast Guard arrived on the airwaves, belatedly trying to get the story from those who had responded to the distress call and coordinate a rescue effort. But the fishermen had beaten them to it. In less than a dozen minutes, the boat Second Lady arrived just in time to see Lucky Lure disappear under the dark waves and pluck a wet and dazed Mr. Rachels out of the water. Soon we again heard the stumbling voice of Mr. Rachels.

"Lucky Lure", he paused, almost choking, "is no more."

It was only when he again gave his coordinates, this time as longitude and latitude, that we realized that the whole drama had unfolded almost right under our noses! It was, in fact, Second Lady that we had seen speeding over the horizon on her rescue mission just a few minutes earlier. As the sun rose and cast its welcome glow on the scene 30 miles off the coast of South Carolina, we realized that we could even see the assembling rescue boats only a few miles off our starboard bow.

It was somehow reassuring to witness, first hand, how quickly the marine community had rallied around one call for help. Rather than be shaken by this vivid reminder of the dangers of living on the water, I was comforted to know that sailors are so quick to come to the aid of one of their kind in need. After listening to the rest of the story, shivering in the cold early morning air, I climbed back into my bunk to snatch a few remaining moments of sleep before my watch began at 6 a.m.

We were now almost half way to Hilton Head and with any luck, we might actually make it in time for Mom's surprise party after all.