Just a quick note at 11 a.m. Sunday, because it’s pretty lumpy here 90 miles south of the Gulf Stream, and occasional buckets of seawater are dropping on top of Robin, and a stray one could get into the cabin and kill the laptop on the chart table.

We had an adventurous night, between the gale and the whale. The bottom line: We lost both our autopilot and our windvane steering and now have the tiller tied in place.

The whale came first. There was no sighting, just an unearthly thump.

Many are the times when a steep wave — some call them rogue, but that’s a misnomer — whacks the hull. If you know your boat half well, you can tell exactly which part of the boat was hit. It can be very jarring.

Monica was in her berth, and I was on watch, but neither of us saw the whale. First, it was dark out, and we were rocketing along with just a staysail and a double reefed mainsail at more than 7 knots.

I knew it was a whale by the sound, the feel and the location — at the very bottom of our full keel. The sound was about the same as if you had run aground on a steep mud bank at the same speed. The feel was hard but also soft.

If the whale came looking for us, we didn’t find out. I imagine he’s hurting, no matter how big he is. He got slammed by 10 tons, including 7,000 pounds of lead.

I decided before midnight it might be prudent to run the generator to be sure the batteries were charged fully. I am guessing this was a direct cause of the loss of the autopilot, for when after 50 minutes I turned off the generator, the autopilot began beeping, and there was the smell of burned-out electrical equipment.

We scrambled to figure what had happened, and once we saw our predicament, I went aft, climbing out on the stern pulpit to deploy the windvane. In the dark. With the white foam of our wake rushing a foot or two below my feet. With my hands locked in death grips on the railings. And with my harness and tether secured to the jackline, of course.

For several early morning hours, the windvane steered us well, if meanderingly.

But the wind increased, and with Monica once again in her berth — I had asked her to go there — I thought it was time to give the rigging a break and heave-to.

The maneuver went smoothly, with the help of the engine to get the bow turned into the wind, which I estimate was blowing roughly 25 to 30 knots. (My estimates for wind and wave height are pretty rough. I have not mastered the art.)

It was first light when I called on the radio to any vessel in the vicinity, announcing we were hove-to at a certain location for which I gave the coordinates. Then I went below and climbed into the port settee with the lee cloth up and slept for more than two hours.

At 7:30 this morning, back in the cockpit, I decided there were conditions OK for sailing with the staysail alone. Monica clipped herself into her bunk with her harness. I untied the tiller from its position on the lee rail and steered to the northwesterly course we needed to travel to reach our next waypoint.

But when I went to engage the windvane, its upper parts flopped into the water like the top of a rag doll, and its gearing with which you tune it to the wind wouldn’t work. I lashed it into place in the hopes that I can figure out how  to repair it when the race is over.

Now, the ram arm of the kaput autopilot is attached to the tiller, holding the rudder in a fixed position. At first, this steered us on course, because the wind was favorable.

But now the wind has turned more northerly, and we are sailing almost directly magnetic north, about 30 degrees to the east from the rhumb line.

With the staysail up, we are averaging about 4 knots, some of it bringing us closer to Newport.

I looked at the weather charts we were given Friday in St. Georges. If I understand them correctly, we got weather last night that we should have gotten late tonight. If that is true, then by tomorrow, we may have favorable southwesterly winds to take us through the Gulf Stream and on to the finish line.

Or maybe not.