After I went to bed the weather worsened. Now the wind was more around 40 knots and gusted to over 50 knots (that is 9-10 Beaufort!). The waves were getting even higher than 2 nights ago, big black walls over our heads, and it was dark, no moon. The crew on the next watch decided to reduce (reef) the sails at around 1am and then it came all together: two monster waves were rounding up the boat, the crew started to bring in the sails, the boat at one time was perpendicular to the waves in a trough, we let the sail sheets go to ease pressure, the jib sheets started to tangle and we could not get the jib completely in. The sails were luffing wildely in the storm, the whole boat was vibrating, and then to complete the mayhem the steering broke again. I just heard "bitch!" and then they asked me to go into the cabin and hail the Coast Guard and give them our position as a precaution. The skipper was instructing crew members how we would get the heavy life raft out of the storage area, just in case we needed it, and when I once looked up into the cockpit the skipper was already holding the emergency beacon (EPIRB) in his hand. The boat continued to shake wildly in the seas and the wind was howling loudly. We could not bring the jib in completely and about 3 square meters continued to be exposed. What worried me most was that the forestay started to vibrate heavily and the whole hull resonated with it. I feared that maybe the forestay may break and that we could get demasted, which is not exactly good. I looked at the charts and found out that the next harbour would be roughly 30 miles away, Fort Bragg. We started to head in that direction, not knowing whether the seas would be worse, steeper, once we were closer to shore. That was the moment when I thought that I did not want to be there and that I wanted to get out of this, big-pit-in-the-stomach time. - Well, this time we fixed the steering problem very quickly and in hindsight we managed it all well, but at that moment, not knowing what would happen and whether everything would hold up, it was pretty bad. Looking back it was definitely a big experience to go through this and master the situation, but I can probably do without it in life. - After 2-3 hours the weather closer to shore got better and we all eased up a bit. In the morning hours we reached Ft. Bragg and the Coast Guard was already waiting for us. They had contacted us a few more times throughout the night to make sure everything was OK (and we were a harbour celebrity, people asking whether we would be the boat that had the rudder problems the night before). They escorted us into the harbour and we inspected the boat. The jib was shredded and we took it off. Apart from that we had minor damage. - We discussed what to do and after listening to 4 different, partially contradicting weather forecasts (one talking about 15-foot seas and people from another boat who came up the coast the night before said they had 25-foot seas) and looking into all options decided to set sail again the next morning at 4am. I won't go into all parameters of our decision making here, but it was a long discussion and at the end leaving early on Friday seemed like the best thing to do. - We had a nice dinner on the boat and went to bed early, having found our positive spirits again.