2025 Bermuda Reports

DAY 1-2 5/29 & 5/30:
We got underway from Cobb’s Marina yesterday morning after taking on fuel and water and pumping out. We had an uneventful trip through the bridge-tunnel. Apparently, the Navy decided to stay home. We did have a pod of dolphins accompany us out to the ocean.

Once past the pilot area at the mouth of the Bay, we set the main sail and headed toward our waypoint off Cape Hatteras. We couldn’t set our headsail, since the wind was not quite perfectly on our nose and we wanted to get as far south as possible before entering the Gulf Stream.

As the sun headed for the western horizon, the weather turned rainy, although the fog and thunderstorms predicted did not materialize. In fact, the sea was pretty flat and the wind tended to stay below 10 knots. Because of this, we were able to have a hearty first night dinner in the cockpit, prepared by Charlie and Tony. David led Will through the intricacies of sea water in buckets dish cleaning, while Colm and Frank managed the boat.

Overnight, we ran through the fishing fleet out of Oregon Inlet, but by dawn, we were on our own little patch of ocean. The sky looks like it going to try to clear up and the crew are eager to try out their sextant skills.

We have set the Genoa now and will be angling more easterly to try to get some lift. We anticipate hitting the GS during the 08-12 or maybe early in the 12-16. We will head more easterly after that.

DAY 3 - 5/31:
Short entry. Solid winds from SW, good speed, but seas rough and weather squally overnight. Crew ok.

We sailed through a storm overnight that kept the crew up for over 7 hours. We even hove to for a few hours. This morning, the crew is resting up and playing that fun sailor game, “when did I get that bruise!??!”

DAY 4 - 6/1:

As I am writing this, we have just passed the halfway point of this leg of our run. This means that we are now well past the geographic midpoint of the trip and, we believe, we are past the time midpoint. Despite the rough weather for the past couple of days, we have made really good speed. This morning, we reset the headsail and, if the wind continues to drop, we may even shake the reef out of the mainsail.

The crew continues to be in good spirits. We enjoyed a hearty sausage and rice dinner last night and finished up with a dessert of Oreo cookies. This was the first crew dinner that everyone actually had a serving of!

We continue to have overcast skies, but our celestial navigators are getting the best shots they can and are doing well at their plotting. Today, we will attempt to get a morning and an afternoon sun shot and plot an actual running fix. Excitement is high.

We are still to far out to say for certain, but it looks like we will make it to Bermuda either Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning. Wish us luck!

DAY 5 - 6/2:
Today started with a large pod of porpoises swimming by the boat, just after sunup. 15 or 20 of the small, dark gray bodies slid past us on their way to some important underwater meeting. As I have been told, any day with dolphin is a good day, and I choose to assume that the same holds true for porpoises.

Unfortunately, this is the only good thing that happened this morning. At about 2 AM, our faithful wind, which has been pushing us along for three days, departed us and we found ourselves sailing on the iron wind. The sea state got so flat that we had to drop the mainsail and secure it, because the gentle rolling of the boat slapped the sail back and forth with each cycle.

We are less than 175 miles to our Bermuda waypoint. I can now pretty confidently say that we will arrive there between noon and midnight tomorrow. This means we probably won’t get in until Wednesday morning, but we should be close enough to the island tomorrow evening for text messages and possibly email from the crew to you.

Speaking of getting close to Bermuda, we saw our first Bermudan long tails yesterday. They circled us at about 250 miles out. There are few things more majestic than a long tail in flight and we were happy for the good arrival omen they bring.

DAY 6 - 6/3:
As you read this, we are less than 50 miles from Bermuda. We have had a very uneventful last 24 hours. Our wind has deserted us and we have been grinding along. We haven’t seen a white cap in over 12 hours. Of all of our weather services, Tom was the most accurate with his prediction.

We are all eagerly looking for the first sight of land. Everyone has their plans made and are ready to get on to shore and back home.

One of the things that our crew will remember is the excellent food this trip. Our mid-watch team of Tony and Charley have outdone themselves in preparing dinner each evening and this morning, they put the icing on the cake, so to speak, with a hot breakfast of scrambled eggs with meat and cheese, accompanied by hot, buttered toast. An excellent treat!

DAY 7 - 6/4:
For those of you keeping track, I really have no idea what day of the trip this is. We have arrived in Bermuda, we are tied up and our fearless crew has departed, leaving the boat quiet, clean, and empty. David and I are busy getting showers, doing mounds of laundry and looking forward to going over to the White Horse Bar for lunch and a drink!

We spent most of yesterday motoring or motor-sailing with just the headsail deployed. The wind was just flukey enough that we didn't want to set the mainsail, especially since the wind was coming from behind us to our starboard quarter. By using just the headsail, we were able to set it when we had wind and douse it when it started to flog.

We finally saw the island of Bermuda at about 2:00, from about 20 miles off. At 3:00, those of us with "smart watches" suddenly found ourselves on Bermuda time, which was an hour later than our time zone. Now half the boat thought it was 3:00 and half thought it was 4:00. Most importantly, the Customs and Immigrations people ashore thought it was 4:00, which meant closing time.

Now, we had a choice. We could try to get into the anchorage area inside the island itself or we could sit offshore and wait for the morning. We took the more conservative decision and hove-to offshore. We set a waypoint on the GPS and when the boat had moved two miles from the waypoint, we started the engine and moved back. Of course, since we were still underway, we kept a crew up through the night, monitoring the situation.

In the morning, we got the boat ready to enter Bermuda, but discovered that, during the night, two huge cruise ships had showed up and were doing the same thing we were (the C&I people may come to their ships, but they don't come any earlier than 8:00!). So, we slowly headed toward the entrance while Bermuda Radio asked us to stand by while the cruise ships went in ahead of us. Darn tourists!

When we got close to the Cut - the actual entrance to the St. George's area where we dock - Bermuda Radio came back on and told us that the Customs and Immigrations dock was "heavily damaged" and that we needed to land at Penno's Wharf East and walk over to the C&I office. We agreed - and then pulled out the charts to try to figure out where Penno's Wharf East was! It turns out that it is better known as the Ferry Terminal. On either side of the main dock is a little wharf, capable of taking one or maybe two boats. Luckily for us, there was no one there, so we were able to land, walk over, get checked in and then go over to the Bermuda Yacht Services office, where we could get information about what our options were.

After a little bit of sweet-talking and begging (not shameless begging, mind you - just regular begging), we were able to get slotted into a spot over at the main marina facility, which gave us access to showers, laundry and air conditioning. Heaven!

So, we moved the boat, the students packed their gear and we said goodbye, wrapping up another successful Bermuda run.

We have some reprovisioning and minor repairs and maintenance, but we will be ready for the next crew, when they show up Friday afternoon.

Now, if we could just remember what day today is....