The Bermuda Triangle: no extraterrestrials or missing bombers to report.

Well, we sailed 900 miles through the Bermuda triangle and didn’t spot one extraterrestrial or missing WWII bomber…bummer. We left Simpson Bay Lagoon in St. Martin on Tuesday through the 11:30 bridge opening. It was like starting our trip with a parade. Several boats turned north along with us, and all those who didn’t turn off within 10 miles to head into Marigot or visit the island of Anguilla were either headed to Bermuda or back to the US. We had an incredible sailing day, with perfect winds forcing us along at hull speed and a current taking us on an even faster carpet ride. We stayed in sight of several boats for a few hours, but by nightfall we had spread out enough that we couldn’t see any navigation lights. On Wednesday, we made radio contact with our friends on Waterapp and another boat nearby, Hobnob, and found out that another boat from St. Martin, Bombay Sapphire, was along in the pack. We were extremely lucky that Hobnob was in SSB contact with one of the best weathermen out there, Herb Hilgenberg in Canada, and each day we could listen to him on SSB channel 12359 giving Hobnob very specific weather information and advice from his arsenal of weather data. We had pretty good luck receiving weather files (grib) with our satellite phone as well and could keep up with the weather on a daily basis. Even though we were having exceptional wind conditions, we had extremely cloudy days with occasional rain or squalls and dark cloudy nights for the entire trip.

We continued sailing at a blistering rate doing 170 miles the fist day from noon to noon, 159 miles the next, and 169 the third...all of these far exceeding the number of miles we sailed in a 24 hour period before. At this rate we were going to make it to Bermuda in 4 days rather than the 5-7 predicted. The winds were broadside or a little forward and we could make use of all of our sails. After several days though the winds switch around to directly behind us and we started to slow down to a speed which would have thrilled us in the past, but disappointed us this week. When the winds got light enough we raised the Spinnaker and happily sailed with her for several hours until a gust caught her and blew out some hardware. We decided it wasn’t worth losing the sail, so we ended up spending all day changing our sail configurations in the light but gusty conditions trying to find something that would move us at a decent rate, but for the most our fast ride was done. We lost radio contact with everyone during the downwind portion of the sail; and although we felt we were going quite slow, we had pulled out of radio range from the others. As the winds came back around they were too light to keep us moving very fast and for the last 24 hours they were right on our nose. We tried tacking east or west, but it was disheartening making 2-3 knot progress towards Bermuda, and we finally ended up cranking up the motor for the last 24 hours.

We were required to call Bermuda Radio when we were 30 miles outside the harbor and we were already on their radar. We had pre-filed a float plan with them, so they had all of the safety information they require from each vessel nearing Bermuda. They filled us in on big ship traffic that we would encounter as we entered the harbor and asked us to call back when we arrived at the channel and they would give us further directions to the customs dock. Bermuda Radio is really like air-traffic control for the water. This is really the most formal and secure system we’ve seen so far and we were impressed with the efficiency, courtesy, and cheerful attitude of all involved. We came into the Customs dock an hour short of 6 days after we left; our travel time was 143 hours covering a distance of 894 miles, averaging 6.3 knots. We might have had our hopes up for better things along the way, but this was really much better time than we expected to make. We are anchored near the wharf in St. George’s at N32 22.80 W64 40.34 on a glorious 74 degree sunny day.

Now that we’ve been in St. George’s for a couple of days we find it absolutely charming. We spent some time with the folks from Hobnob at a street festival on Tuesday night and took a moonlight walking tour of the old city. We are cleared in for a 3 week stay and we are really looking forward to spending so much time in one place again; especially such a wonderful place as Bermuda! Gary and Chris are on their way in Thursday and we’ll let them be our tour guides. I expect we’ll even stay longer as it looks like Andreas and then Emily may get a chance to visit us in June. We'll update the blog soon with pictures of this lovely island.