One place you don't want to be: In a sailboat in the Atlantic Ocean during a hurricane.

And yet, that's just the adventure a crew of Shelter Islanders recently returned from.

What started out one breezy November day as a fun trip with friends on a 46-foot sailboat to Antigua via Bermuda turned into a struggle to survive. The breezes became deadly, courtesy of Hurricane Lenny,

"This was a perfect storm and we were into it," said Mike Heimann, who put the trip together. "Now that I've had the experience I don't ever want to do it again."

This drama came in two acts and started with a cast of six: Robert and Michael Heimann, Gary DePaulo, James Cogan, Michael DeVoe and Christian Langendal.

Act I began when the crew set out from Shelter Island on Nov. 5. They were expecting a four-day weather window of 10- to 15-knot breezes to propel their French-built Jeanneau, May Britt, to Bermuda. What they got was an unexpected cold front with 25- to 35-knot breezes and near 20-foot waves.

The winds were supposed to die down, but they didn't. Crew members saw a signal flare in the darkness but were having trouble of their own and couldn't help.

"We saw some kind of flare and everybody had an eerie mood," said Mike Heimann. "We're all good sailors, but we didn't want to go into this storm because we didn't know if we were going to make it back."

Once into the storm, it was too late for second thoughts. The crew had already sailed a day deep into the Atlantic, and those 20-foot seas were breaking on the stern. Heading home would have meant

"We came close to pitch-poling," said Mr. Heimann, recalling one particularly steep wave that almost flipped the boat end over end. "I couldn't take it any more. I had to leave the helm."

Sailing the boat became a chore that the crew shared until they reached Bermuda. The storm had taken its toll, knocking out the anemometer, the compass lights and running lights. A flashlight illuminated the compass during the night shifts and the anchor light was the only beacon marking their presence.

In Bermuda (where Jim Cogan left the crew to return to Long Island on business) some repairs were made and weather reports were monitored. A big storm off Puerto Rico was getting bigger and another storm was making overtures over the Caribbean . Fears the two could merge into a super storm kept the crew in Bermuda longer than planned. But Act II finally began when they left for Antigua on Nov. 14.

By then both storms had diminished and the May Britt carried extra gas for what promised to be a long motor to Antigua. The crew knew nothing about an ominous low pressure system off South America

"Everybody was just enjoying themselves, reading books and having a good time," said Mr. Heimann. "The low became a hurricane on Nov. 17 but we were two days out." And out of radio range. Again, no turning back.

Lenny introduced himself a day later. The last 18 gallons of extra fuel went into the boat's tank. Sails the size of handkerchiefs went up the mast. And all hands settled down to ride out the storm.

As winds approached 80 knots (Mr. Heimann's estimate, the anemometer still being broken), the waves neared 50 feet, he said. Wind and waves were coming out of the southeast about 45 degrees off the course the crew needed to hold to reach Antigua.

That had the May Britt beating into a hurricane that slammed her 50 degrees or more to the west with every cresting wave. To get over each, the crew had to head straight into the wave and then veer off and ride the May Britt into the trough like a surfboard.

Each new wave brought the risk of broaching (turning broadside to the waves, often the last thing that happens before capsizing). "You're in it, you're concentrating, you're fighting for your life," said Mr. Heimann. "If you broached, you were never going to make it."

At the height of the storm, white squalls appeared, winds so strong they blurred the boundary between air and sea. White foam whipped up, engulfing everything.

"I remember going up [from the cabin] and just seeing white," said Michael DeVoe, 20, the second-youngest crew member. "Everything you looked at was just white. It was kind of freaky."

Mr. DeVoe was the least experienced of the crew, so when the weather was heaviest, he was asked to stay below. He'd emerge from time to time, grab onto one of the lifeline stanchions that ringed the boat and survey the scene.

"There were just walls of water," he said. "You'd come to the top and look down. The keel no longer held the water and you'd just slide down [into the trough]."

With Mr. DeVoe below and the captain of the boat, Robert Heimann, Mike's uncle, taken ill, Mike Heimann and the remaining crew sailed the boat in four-hour shifts. They fought the bands of squalls that made up Lenny for 36 hours, with no time for food, catching whatever sleep they could.

In the radio silence the crewmen never realized they were in a hurricane. But the younger Mr. Heimann got suspicious when he saw palm trees and beach grass floating in the water. He said: "I didn't say anything to anybody. I didn't want to make everybody worry." He remembers wondering if the boat would hold up.

It did, but not before giving the crew plenty to worry about. The mast spreaders caught the wind like a pair of kites and the aluminum shaft twisted like a metal python. Losing the mast would mean losing the sails and control against the winds that roared through the stays.

The motor was running but it wasn't powerful enough to fight the winds that had slowed the boat to a crawl. One wave came over the boat, knocked Mr. Heimann into the helm and tore off the boat's dodger, a kind of canopy.

"That's when I said to myself, 'I'm not coming up here without a safety harness,'" said Mr. Heimann. "I was almost washed overboard."

The high winds forced the May Britt to alter course to St. Martin. As Lenny started to exit, it continued to pelt the boat with squalls that kept the crew on their guard when they wanted to relax.

"The rain would stop and the wind would quiet down to 40 or 50 [mph] and it would be nice," Mr. Heimann said. "Then the squalls would come back with 80-knot winds and that's a hell of a lot of wind. You'd see this gray mass coming toward you and the wind would pick up and it would stay like that for four or five hours."

Eventually the wind blew out, taking the waves with it. Not long after that, the May Britt dropped anchor in a devastated St. Martin. Radio and lights were out on the island, so the crewmen went ashore to go through customs, their ordeal over at last.

"That boat was fighting for her life, basically, and I'm glad she did," said Mr. Heimann. "She brought us back to safety."

"It was an interesting trip," he concluded, "but I wouldn't put that on my Christmas list for anybody."