Bermuda

St. George's, Bermuda. A UNESCO World Heritage site

We loved Bermuda. The weather was markedly cooler and less humid than San Juan and the combination of the quintessential island architecture and dazzling blue waters made the island one of our favorite stops so far. St. George’s is a UNESCO National Heritage Site and we happily wandered around the town, exploring the cobblestone alleyways and streets that are lined with stucco houses painted in bright pastels. My favorite part of St. George’s is the town square, King's Square. It’s a big, open area and the town has provided shaded benches and picnic tables for local residents and tourists. They also have outdoor speakers playing a random variety of music, oftentimes Madonna. Kind of bizarre but also entertaining. The free wifi also adds to the appeal.

The inner docks in St. George's, with the customs dock on one side and the town square on the other.
And, most importantly for us, the dinghy dock and trash receptacles.

Not my best picture, but an idea of what downtown St. George's looks like.

King's Square, the town square.

Hans and Adam (Bravo) walking down a main street in St. George's.
Note their outfits and ask: would we let these two in the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club?

Flowers growing everywhere. I can tell that we're further north because there were lots of familiar flowers to me, nastursiums, pansies, and other temperate weather flowers.

We visisted a small historical museum and were given a demonstration of a replica Gutenburg printing press. Very neat.

Perhaps because I ahd just fnished reading the very intense novel, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, so I was thinking a lot about the slave trade, but I found the history of the slave trade in Bermuda poignant. While there certainly is plenty of British history and seafaring history to see in Bermuda, there is also an African Diaspora Heritage Trail that chronicles the history of Africans and slavery in Bermuda through museums, statues, memorials, and houses. We visited the cemetary at St. Peter's Church in St. George's which was segregated and Matilda found and paid her respects at a small grave in the black cemetery.

Beach hopping on the East End of Bermuda

From St. George’s we could walk to the north end of the island to two idyllic beaches, one with a bar and restaurant and an outdoor pool table, and the other with a fancy resort. The fancy resort served us drinks, but at resort prices… $24 for a rum punch. Ouch.

Run, run! We're off the boat after six days at sea!

Tobacco Cay

So this is where I have to eat crow for teasing Hans and Adam about their board shorts. We had no plans to go to the beach so I didn't pack my swimsuit. But since these two are always wearing their swim shorts, they were able to truly enjoy themselves. (After about 30 minutes Cindi and I said "f*ck it" and we pulled our dresses up and joined them.)

Have you ever played pool at the beach?

The pool at the fancy resort. We figured that after spending over $100 for four drinks, we were allowed to take a dip in the pool. "This rates pretty low on the suck-o-meter." --Adam, Bravo

Cliff jumping, ice cream, and the famous Bermuda Swizzles

We took a taxi with friends to mid-island to jump in a blue hole, followed by ice cream, which was followed by more expensive rum punches. Locally known as Swizzles, they were good, but wow, Bermuda prices are super expensive.

Can Matilda be any happier? Ice cream AND Chewie?

I think Freja must have had a sugar rush from her ice cream!

Learning how to drive the dinghy. This kid doesn't have a slow and cautious speed.

A new decoration on Matilda's door. This has something to do with Harry Potter but I'm not sure what. The singing lady? A password? No idea, but I like the artwork.

Hamilton and Royal Naval Dockyard

On what was perhaps the hottest day we decided to hop on the bus and travel to the southern end of the island to check out Hamilton. It is an affluent and touristy town, and obviously a center for off-shore banking, as evidenced by modern glass office buildings, fancy cars, lots and lots of men in business suits, and Rolex and Gucci stores instead of your run of the mill trinket shops. In the heat of the day we ducked into an Italian restaurant (Adam followed his nose) and we had a huge, delicious lunch in beautiful air conditioning. We took a ferry over to the Royal Naval Dockyard to visit the National Museum. The exhibits centered mainly on slavery and seafaring. Informative but not very interactive so it was pretty boring for the kids. It was, however, housed in the old governor’s mansion which was amazing with a huge wrap-around porch overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

Back in Hamilton we tried to go to the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, but our visit coincided with a celebration for the Queen’s 75th birthday and we were a little underdressed, to say the least. Well, I think Cindi and I and the kids would have been fine, but Hans and Adam were dressed in their standard faded, salt-saturated, sun-bleached board shorts and old souvenir t-shirts in true cruiser fashion. It was amusing to see the true Anglophiles of Bermuda behaving in their most proper imperialist fashion.

We were eying the squall nervously on the ferry ride back to Hamilton. Will it hit us? Or will it track north to St. George's and hit PW where we left all the hatches open? Matilda was non-plussed; she had a new book. (We got lucky. It tracked north, even north of St. George's so we got a dramatic sky and some cool wind but no rain.)

Tropical Storm Alex

The big event of our week in Bermuda was Tropical Storm Alex. I’d been watching it brew for over a week when it was first in the Gulf of Mexico. For tropical weather, I follow Mike’s Weather Page on Facebook (he also has a website https://spaghettimodels.com/), and he had been paying attention to the disturbance in the Gulf. Then in crossed Florida, caused a bunch of flooding in Miami, and then barreled up the Gulf Stream to Bermuda. Hans had the foresight to move our boat way in advance of the storm to a tight little cove near the main anchorage with room for only one boat. We were in a perfect little spot and weren't overly concerned about the storm. But after living in Florida for three years and the gulf coast of Texas for three years, including Hurricane Harvey, we’re a little sensitive to tropical weather, so we still went over and above with our precautions. I tracked the data on NOAA’s sea buoys to watch the wind speed, and when the Hurricane Hunters flew into the storm a day or two before it was going to arrive in Bermuda and recorded winds around 70 knots, we decided to up our storm prep and we took down our Genoa and our staysail. Our little cove was indeed little and while we had enough swinging room, we didn’t have any room for dragging since we were surrounded by reefs. So we set our secondary anchor, a big fortress, which we would lie to when the wind switched to the W/NW. We took off the shade coverings on the doghouse windows, hoisted the dinghy on the davits and lashed it tightly, and we cleared everything out of the cockpit.

The calm before the storm as seen from our little anchorage.

I woke up around 2:30 on the morning of the storm to increased winds. I lay around in bed listening to the wind and wondering and worrying. Then I realized there was zero point laying in bed and worrying, I might as well be sleeping. At that point I was way too amped up to sleep so I got out of bed and sat in the doghouse and watched the windspeed and paid attention to our location vis-a-vis other boats and the shore. We weren’t going anywhere. The wind howled, it rained on and off, Hans woke up, the kids woke up, it kept storming. I think the kids watched four movies in a row! We watched the gusts, exclaiming when they went over 40 knots, but generally we saw consistent winds from the S/SW around 35 knots for most of the morning. The wind steadily clocked around to the W/NW like it was forecast to do and the winds got lighter. 25 knots felt like a gentle breeze. When it dropped to 15 knots around 5PM, Hans started calling our friends to gauge interest in happy hour. The winds in the main anchorage, however, were still at least 10 knots higher than what we were experiencing in our snug cove. When we all met up the next day, both Bravo and Leia reported steady winds in the mid 40s and gusts to the 60s. Way more than we saw. But everyone fared well and the only casualty was when Leia’s dinghy flipped over and they lost their gas tank.

We tracked wind speeds for the whole storm. You can see that we had solid 35 gusting into the low 40s for quite a while. But still significantly less than in the main anchorage. And less wave action too.

Our last hurrah in Bermuda

With the storm passed and our departure date for Maine the next day, we had a final dinner on Positive Waves with Bravo and Leia and tried not to shed too many tears when we said goodbye to Leia. We know we’ll see Adam and Cindi again—we’re both headed to Maine, they’re going further north, but cruisers have a habit of leap frogging and bumping into each other—but Malin and Chewie are sailing back to Sweden to go back to work until they can get back out sailing again. We’ve been sailing together basically for a year, from Öckerö through northern Europe, France, Spain, Portugal, the Canaries, and up the eastern Caribbean island chain to Bermuda. Our kids have formed an intense bond with them, as close to family as you can get. Cruisers always have a lot in common, starting from a mutual affinity for the sea and for traveling and the ability to go through varying levels of discomfort and risk in order to get a big reward, but, like with anyone you meet, there are some people you just click with. We click with Malin and Chewie and we will sorely miss them.

The kids had whipped cream from a can for the first time.

From Bermuda to Maine

We went to bed with pre-passage jitters and heavy hearts, and awoke early to bring the boat over to customs to check out. Hans needed to retrieve his spear gun which he had to forfeit upon arrival (you’re not allowed to bring weapons to Bermuda) and we needed our clearance out of port. With that job done, we motored back out to the anchorage, dropped the anchor between Bravo and Leia, and did some last minute pre-passage prep. I have no idea what we did, maybe we put the dinghy on deck? I completely forget. At any rate, we raised anchor, motored past our friends waving goodbye, and we were out the harbor entrance with our bow pointing north to Maine at 10AM. We estimated about a five day passage to Maine, hopefully with more wind than the passage from San Juan to Bermuda!