Bikinis and Bermuda Shorts: Yes I am a pirate, 200 years too late

On April 7th and 8th, my friend Chris Staples and I joined an exclusive club of people who have sailed around an entire country in a boat with no cabin! As a last hoorah for both of us, he before he leaves, and myself before I start working, we decided to leave the women at home and venture around the country of Bermuda on a 2 day sailing excursion in his 26 foot sailboat. In true sailing style, I have mapped out our course on this digital picture of an old map of Bermuda

Day 1:
Forecast - "Sunny and calm. Best for beers but we may get a sail in if it picks up Friday" - Chris

Woke up at 6:30 to get ready for the trip. Packed up my gear, kissed my beautiful wife goodbye and made the epic walk to the bus stop. Feeling like a pack mule, I met Chris at the downtown bus depot at 7:45 to catch the 8:00am #8 to Ely's Harbor in Somerset Parish. Not a cloud in the sky, we arrived and loaded up the dinghy to cast out to the boat and begin our adventure. We loaded up the engine and took off for the gas station to fill up the reserves just in case.

Got gas and were out in the open ocean by 10 and started to the hoist the sails. The jib sail, which as you can see is covered in rust stains, went up easy. The main sail, not so much. In fact, it got stuck about half way up and took everything we had to hoist all the way to the top.

Laughing but not amused

So we finally got the main up and set sail only . . . . there was not really any wind. We traveled south a bit and as soon as we got around the corner, nothing. Well, nothing but views of this beautiful Island!

The Princess, our view forever

We sat in front of the Princess for about 2 hours or so and even considered going back for a bit, but decided to venture on under the power of gas. Dropped the motor and took off with the sail up. We passed a bunch of pretty cool things on the way, though honestly weren't close enough for the pictures to do it justice. There was a pretty stout line of reefs protecting pretty much the entire south shore that would have bashed our boat into little pieces. Fiberglass is pretty resilient, though I couldn't imagine 200 years ago running up on one of those things in a wooden boat patched together with tar! As we traveled around the south side of the island up to St. George's to dock for the night, we saw a lot of familiar landmarks I have posted in previous blog posts. Including the lighthouse we went up in the other week as well as my restaurant on Elbow Beach.

Can't imagine how much that stairway cost

Killer Reef!

My future place of employment in the bottom left corner. You can see the reefs in the way!

St. David's Lighthouse from the other week

Airplane taking off from the Airport

Cannons from the Lost at Sea Memorial

We hit the far east side of the island about 5 o'clock and started looking for a place to dock for the night. We settled on Smith's Sound which is just around the bend from the Lost at Sea Memorial. We made our way in and started looking for a place to throw anchor. We found a great place next to the park with an open mooring and decided to tie up to a mooring and dock there for the night. However, after drinking beer and mango rum juice all day we weren't exactly, ummm, precise with our docking movements. It took us about 15 minutes to even maneuver the boat next to a mooring and even longer to pull it out of the water to tie up. We lost a pair of pliers, Chris got jibed in the head with a swinging main sail that caught its first wind of the day, and then took quite a spill when we ran the boat aground. At this point, an older rather unpleasant sounding man yelled at us from his porch where he had been watching us ineptly tie up our boat. In an accent that made me feel like Burt Reynolds in Deliverance, he told us we couldn't dock there, threatened to injure us if we scratched his boat, and then demanded we move in a way that contradicted both Southern and Bermuda hospitality. Now legally, we are allowed to throw down an anchor anywhere we darn well please but rather than deal with his rage we moved a little farther down the harbor and I made sure to thank him for his hospitality, laying on the sarcasm as thickly as I possibly could. We found another mooring to tie up to just as the sun started to dip behind the horizon and made our unfortunate dinners, warm beer and bread, they said it could raise the dead; well it reminded me of the menu at a Holiday Inn! dreaming of a cheeseburger in paradise, medium rare with mustard would have been nice, heaven on earth with an onion slice. However we settled for PB&J and some crushed up Doritos. Meal was great and the sunset was simply amazing. There was a jet flying across the horizon leaving a vapor trail between the clouds. The pictures simply don't do it justice.

Turtle Crossing!!

Relaxing for the night

Now the boat had no cabin and isn't very wide and didn't provide much sleeping space. Add in another person and it was pretty uncomfortable. I don't think I actually hit REM sleep and woke up quite frequently as I was sleeping in a wedged up corner. At around 4:30 I was staring into the sky, which was pristine, no light pollution, and noticed a HUGE shooting star rocket over the boat. Realizing I wasn't going to get much sleep anyways, I climbed up onto the stern of the boat and laid down to check out the light show. Over the next hour or so until the sun started to creep up, I saw over a dozen shooting stars. Pretty crazy the amount of stuff that bombards our atmosphere. The sky was so clear, I was actually able to see satellites travel overhead in their orbit. Unfortunately, I couldn't take any pics that turned out so here's the moon between the mast lines.

Day 2
The sun started peeking over the horizon around 6 and Chris got up and we pulled up anchor and made our way to the gas station to top up on gas and possibly buy some beer (for later in the day). However, this worthless gas station didn't actually sell gas AND despite my pleading and begging, wouldn't sell us beer either. Said we had to wait until 8am. Ridiculous! Deciding not to wait, we dropped motor and ventured off into the sunset to make the journey around the northern side.

We made our way out into the open ocean with our coffee in hand and were greeted with an awesome surprise. The wind was blowing like CRAZY!! Seems we weren't going to need that gas after all.

As you can see the wind was blowing like mad; at least 30mph and we quickly got the jib sale up. The main sail presented quite a challenge. As you remember, it didn't go up very easy on day 1. Now with the wind trying to rip it off the boat, it created a whole new set of challenges. It only took about a half hour, but by wrapping a towel around the line, and pulling with all my might while Chris pulled up right by the pulley, we were able to hoist it up about 2 inches at a time. It should have taken little effort and 2 minutes but it probably took years off our ability to walk and rubbed out hands pretty raw. But we were ready for some sailin'!! We were now going directly into the wind so it took quite a bit of tacking to make it around the corner of St. George's and Fort Saint Catherine. That's why you see the jagged line on the map for day 2.

As you can see from the pictures, the boat was leaning at quite an angle due to the wind. For this reason, I really couldn't take any pictures of the North side trip from the East side of the island all the way to the West side when we hit the dockyard. The wind was blowing, waves were washing up over the boat, and we were quite busy navigating and I didn't want to risk getting the camera wet so I locked it up in a plastic bag and hid it safely in the bow for the next 5-6 hours as we traveled across the whole North side. It was awesome, we hit a couple waves that were at least 10 feet high and the ride side of me was completely soaked through by the time we hit Spanish Point when the wind started to change direction and push us into the North Basin and eventually into the Dundonald Channel which is where the island fish hooks on the West side. We traveled into the cove for a bit and made our way over to the Dockyard to pull into port for a bit and grab a six-pack to finish the journey.

The clock tower building is the Dockyard "mall"

Tugboats for the cruise ships

The yellow building is the store and the brick building behind it is the jail where the P.O.R.C club is located

Jail and the mall

We illegally docked here to grab a six-pack. You can see the Omega sail on the end of the dock

Heritage Warf where the cruise ships dock

The Commissioners House and the 6" RBL Gun of the Keep

After clearing the Royal Navy Dockyard we started to make our way South again into the homestretch. All that was left to do was clear Daniels Island and the shipwreck Vixen (1896) and we could shoot right into Ely's Harbour. Except it looked like it was going to rain! So now we have to navigate though the most reef heavy part of the island, around a shipwreck, and try to beat a storm!! And oh yea, we're in the Bermuda Triangle!! It took us about an hour to pass by Mangrove Bay, 9 Beach resort and get to Daniels Island, and we were able to do it before the storm hit. Again worried about my camera, I dared not take it out in the heavy wind, splashing surf, and brewing storm. So I downloaded a pic of the Vixen. Apparently you can dive on the wreck which I fully intend on doing before I leave.

9 Beaches Resort from the air

HMS Vixen (1865-1896)

After pulling around the Vixen it was just a straight shot into Ely's Harbour. Well, not exactly. We had to dodge dozens of reefs, sometimes tacking within a couple feet to avoid running aground. It started to sprinkle a little bit and after about 20 minutes of the most intense sailing maneuvers of the day, we finally made it into port, completing our trip about the island/country. We drifted into the mooring and tied up and the clouds just vanished. Not sure what happened, we really thought we be unloading in the rain, but it because absolutely beautiful again. Took us a while to unload, and we had our victory Bud Lights. The boat has since been sold and Chris has moved back to Canada but I do have to say it was a fantastic experience I'll never forget and a great time.