We made it to Newport a week ago and were greeted at a slip by Robert Patenaude, the ever-effervescent Canadian, and his crewman. It would be a day later before the four remaining boats in our class still racing finally sailed into port.

Early the next morning, we got a rental car for Monica’s quick ride home, in time for the wedding. But first, we returned the rented flares and satellite telephone. I inquired whether the sat phone folks could help me with my toasted autopilot, and they agreed to send someone to visit Robin in her slip that afternoon.

I may take up electronics next. At $120 an hour, the pay is much better than the average journalist can hope to earn.

It had been a rough 48 hours before we got in, although Monica made it much easier for me by taking on a lot of the hand-steering. I got the dark hours and little sleep in the day, however, so my brain circuitry wasn’t much better than that on the dysfunctional autopilot.

Early Saturday morning, I headed back to Newport from New Jersey, shedding the rental car before noon. In the next four hours, before the awards ceremony at the Newport Yacht Club, I went for a run, cleaned Robin, got to know the winner of the OSTAR single-handed race from England — whose boat, a Sigma 33, was docked beside Robin — and tried to remember what had transpired during the previous week.

All the events were there in my memory, but they were jumbled — out of sequence, as far as I knew. I tried not to tell too many stories. At one point in the morning, I had told Monica the same tale three times in 20 minutes, each time with a total lack of memory of the prior telling.

By the time the awards ceremony began, the mental fog was beginning to lift. But the celebration was short-lived, and soon the community that had been the folks of the Bermuda One-Two dissipated like sea fog burning away under the sun.

I was left alone in Newport to ponder the future, both Robin’s and mine.

Robin took a beating, even as she cradled us comfortably out on the tumbling Atlantic. Even before the return leg from Bermuda started, we had lost the use of our outboard (a minor repair, I think), the air conditioning (an essential piece of nautical hardware if you are planning to do any August boating on the Chesapeake), and the prop-shaft zinc.

Then the return leg started and, with it, greater carnage. First the autopilot stopped working. Then the windvane steering broke down. The laptop simply quit. And finally, I noticed, as we attempted to improve our speed by rolling out the genoa, that the roller furling line had become severely chafed to the point of near failure.

I had found a spare line that was long enough to get the genoa rolled, but barely. I made a note to replace it and take a careful look at all of the other running rigging.

Now that the party was over, I had to wait until Monday to learn the verdict about the autopilot. In the delay, I talked with some folks and solicited suggestions.

On Monday morning I learned that the ram that shoves the tiller to port and starboard was out of commission, and that meant the technician could not test the other parts of the autopilot.

My choices were to remain in Newport’s $120-an-hour marine repair environment or move Robin to some place where I can leave her until I find a less costly way to patch her wounds.

By 10:20 a.m. Monday, Robin’s anchor was hauled and, with a thin fog still obscuring the far side of Narragansett Bay, I was motoring west, having determined that the Connecticut River was 50 miles away in a straight line.

The currents broke in my favor, and I was in North Cove in Old Saybrook by dinner time. By 6:30 a.m. the following morning, Robin was up the Connecticut River on the vacant mooring of my good friends Barb and Curt Michael in Hamburg Cove, prepared to stay there a month if it takes that long to effect her repairs.

Monica and I had already scrapped a tentative plan to sail Robin to Maine for a brief visit. There is too much to be done for her in the weeks ahead.

And I needed to get back home and begin working.

My full-time employment with Soundings ended May 11. I had the pleasure to continue writing the blog about our Bermuda adventure, with the support of the magazine.

But now I need to find new work.

I have created a blog page — dougcampbellsbooks.blogspot.com — to market two books I have written and, as yet, have found no publishers. One of the books, “An Irresponsible Adult,” is a memoir wrapped around the tale of our voyages to Bermuda. The other, “Swimming in the Shadow of Death,” is the true story of eight sailors who survived the wreck of a U.S. submarine in enemy territory in World War II.

I will be using that site to continue to blog — it’s habit-forming, apparently.

In the meantime, when she is repaired, Robin will return to her slip in Cambridge, Md., and I will work on writing a youth novel, spurred on by a new sailing friend who has made that sort of endeavor quite a little industry for himself.

It has been a wonderful, stimulating and rewarding four years that I have spent full-time with Soundings editor Bill Sisson and his talented and overworked staff. Indeed, these have been the best years of my professional life.

There may be times when I will be able to make further contributions to what I believe has been the best source of marine journalism in the country. It is sad, however, to no longer serve full-time in the ranks of folks I’ve come to admire. I’ll miss the team.

And I’ll miss you, the readers who, with your presence, no less than your occasional comments, have made writing the blog such a pleasure.