In the Pacific Ocean, 500 kilometres away from The Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia

Everything about our passage seemed to go wrong once we celebrated our passing of the halfway point, 1500 nautical miles and 12 days into our voyage across the Pacific.

It started with the breaking of our main boom, and continued on from there.

The day after our festivities, with little remnants of colourful foam streamers still festooning the cockpit, we were rollicking along with the tradewinds at our back, making good speed. I was on watch, and I didn't hear anything remarkable, but suddenly realized that the boat was rolling much more than before, so I popped my head out the hatch to see why.

I couldn't have been more surprised at the reason: Our main boom, the huge wooden beam leading out from the mast, had snapped in two and was loosely banging around the solar panels, held in place mainly by the straining, flogging mainsail.

The boom had been severed just at the point where a preventer had secured it from accidental swinging. Obviously the strain from that preventer, which was constantly tested as each large ocean swell made the boom shudder and swing, caused the mighty beam to give way.

Thanking our lucky stars that we have a second mast, I began to prepare myself mentally for a much longer voyage under mizzen sail alone. But the ever-tenacious Herbert was already making plans to patch the boom back together, and by nightfall it had received an entirely functional plywood splint that enabled us to continue on our way with mainsail flying, only slightly the worse for wear.

Now, though, we had to watch the boom like hawks, in case our band-aid solution did not hold. This became especially important as, throughout the next day, the winds became ever stronger and the waves ever higher, until soon we found ourselves negotiating an endless series of ugly squalls in which the 20-knot winds could suddenly double in intensity.

During these mini storms, which might last half an hour or an hour, we discovered that if a particularly strong blast of wind coincided with us being tipped over by a large wave, we would slew around broadside to the waves and the autopilot would be unable to correct it. Thus we had to be on constant alert, to prevent these dangerous accidental broachings, and eventually we were forced to take down the mizzen sail altogether, leaving us dependent upon our crippled boom to keep us moving forward. In this state of nervous watchfulness we passed many sleepless days and nights.

With each day of strong winds that passed, the ocean swell grew larger and larger. One morning I crept out of bed and found myself awestruck by the rolling masses of water that were approaching us from behind. Ominously, relentlessly, each watery wall would sweep up until it was right upon us, towering well over our heads as we stood in the cockpit, looking for all the world as if they would consume us whole.

But then, Northern Magic would always do as she was meant to do, and would rise buoyantly on top of each crest, letting the wave slide harmlessly under her keel. Still, I was mesmerized at the awesome power and size of these waves.

On the third day after the breaking of the boom, we noticed the repairs were beginning to give. The stress of these winds and waves was taking its toll, and the boom was slowly forming an inverted V, raised in the middle and down at the ends.

To reduce the stress on it, we shortened sail even further and put ourselves back on a less rowdy starboard tack -- a route that, while more comfortable, would require us to zig-zag back and forth and cost us time and mileage towards our goal.

We had previously been used to many days of 250-kilometre-a-day progress, but babying the boom in this way cost us severely, dropping our progress as low as a depressing 120 kilometres in 24 hours and adding days to what had promised to be a quick passage.

It was 1 a.m.and I had just finished composing my nightly e-mail to my father. I had remarked proudly that Herbert's creative repair of the autopilot was performing well, and I was very happy not to have to be standing in the cockpit, as it was stormy and the cockpit had already been flooded a number of times by particularly aggressive waves crashing into it.

In retrospect, these were clearly reckless and irresponsible words, for it wasn't 10 minutes later that I found myself standing, drenched, in the cockpit, while Herbert attempted yet another autopilot repair.

Those cursed words to my father echoed in my head as I became convinced that I had brought on this miserable fate. Not without reason are sailors superstitious.

For two hours I stood there, one hand used to brace my body against the motion, the other hand gripping the wheel, one eye on a menacing black squall line advancing from behind and the other on the unforgiving compass. I could hear, from somewhere close by, the violent, flapping death throes of a fish that had made its way into the cockpit, but I was helpless to save it from its sad and useless fate.

Like the last time I had been stuck hand-steering in the middle of the night, I could only kick myself for not having tackled the supper dishes, for I could hear them clanking and clattering in the galley. I had left a jug of sour milk out and some ancient leftovers I had intended to pitch overboard, and I knew that the passage of time would not improve their esthetic appeal. I had also baked some oatmeal muffins, and they had been left uncovered on top of the stove. As I fought a dizzying fatigue, I became obsessed with the unattended mess in the galley, and once I was finally freed at 3 a.m., I headed straight there to make what sense of it I could before dropping into bed.

As I stepped into the galley, I just about landed on my head. The mixing bowl for the muffins, which had been left to soak, had been thrown into the air in one of our cataclysmic upheavals, and the galley floor was now covered with a most repulsive greasy slick that oozed between my bare toes and made it impossible to stand.

The reconstituted milk had completely solidified in its plastic bottle. The leftover stew was in a worse state; its plastic Zip-Lock bag was all ballooned out with the gaseous byproducts of its rapidly advancing fermentation.

My muffins, I was dismayed to find, had been drenched with sea water forced in through the ventilation fan, and instead of being crisply moist, were now saltily soggy.

And every last surface was covered with unwashed, unrinsed dishes, in a state of chaotic, sliding disarray.

I gave up on the idea of disposing of the milk and stew and concentrated on rescuing what I could of my muffins. The problem was that I couldn't stand up. I was sliding around on the slippery, oozing surface like Bambi on ice. Finally I belted myself in, using my galley sling, and somehow, with my feet splayed out, managed to cover the muffins and stuff them inside the oven where they would be safe until morning.

But to add insult to injury, a cupboard door slid open as the boat slid over a wave at a particularly acute angle, dumping a container of baking soda all over the already disgraced floor. This was too much for me to cope with at that hour, after everything else that had happened. Filled with revulsion and frustration at this smelly, disgusting mess, I threw myself into the bathroom, put my head in my hands, and cried.

In the days to come, we were beset by new problems and challenges of every kind, as if to test the limits of our patience, resourcefulness and sheer stubbornness. The autopilot got fixed, broken and refixed twice more with brand new malfunctions; the windvane required repair; the topping lift for our spinnaker pole wrapped itself inextricably into our furling system; and, in the latest variation of Murphy's Law, the inverter supplying power to our computer sputtered and died, leaving us without our previous lifeline to the outside world.

Two months ago we were well equipped, we thought, with four inverters, electrical devices that permit regular 120-volt appliances to be run off a 12-volt battery. But, one by one, they have succumbed to the harsh marine environment, starting, of course, with the newest and the most expensive.

It's like the old cartoon in which the character's car fails, so he gets a smaller car out of his trunk, until it too fails, and he keeps coming up with smaller and smaller vehicles until at last he ends up proceeding on roller skates. That is what has been happening with our inverters, so that now we are limping along on one last tiny one, just enough to run some small electrical devices.

The fact that you are reading this report at all is a testament to Herbert's electrical wizardry and my ability to type without benefit of a monitor. Herbert has managed to coax a few last minutes of life out of the gasping, buzzing computer inverter, just enough for me to quickly type this dispatch and transmit it before the half-dead power supply gives up for good.

But on the bright side, we have, by hook or by crook, come 90 per cent of our way, and now only about 500 kilometres separate us from the tantalizing Marquesas Islands of Polynesia.

Every decrease in the distance remaining is matched by a corresponding increase in the state of our spirits, as we begin anticipating walking on solid land once more after the endless days and nights of heaving motion.

This afternoon, we knew our troubles would soon be over, because our path was illuminated by the spectacular arch of a rainbow, marking most vividly the pot of gold that is waiting for us, just ahead.