Robban, the same thing happened to me. Right after my site was up and beginning to climb in rankings, when I had few incoming links, my server burped for about 12 hours one night...Google must have come. I was out of site for about 3 weeks on Google. The great group here told me not to panic and get more links.
Once Google found me again everything was back up. Actually it was about 10 days after the next bot came through. Check your server logs to find out when you were visited. You will get back to where you were.
It seems that things are more stable the more incoming links to your site. It seems that your site is more stable in the search results if Google finds you more than once a month. If you are down during the few times the bot trys you...oops.

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John