Monday, May 26, 2014-
We are in Bermuda, docked at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club in downtown Hamilton. Today is “Bermuda Day”, a public holiday that celebrates the country and is also their Carnival. It is a day of celebrating the island, and has a Carnival-like atmosphere. They have a half marathon and parade. The parade is 3-4 hours long and a huge event. Front Street in Hamilton is turned into a family park with small tents down both sides of the street and families with lawn chairs, grills, tables, and coolers celebrating the day, all day. Spaces are reserved in advance by placing a piece of tape with your name on it to the curb where you want to be, on a first come basis. It is all very civilized. The names with tape start appearing five days in advance.
We walked the parade route and saw a lot of the 3 hour event. There were lots of kids with dance teams, floats, and great costumes. Even the Gombays danced their way through the parade route. There was great spirit throughout the crowd and a real family day on the island.
We were told that Bermuda Day marks the first day of summer for Bermuda much as Memorial Day does in the northeast U.S. It is generally first day the islanders go swimming. Prior to that it’s considered too cold to swim.
We had a bit of excitement Saturday night with a tremendous thunder and lightning storm about midnight that lasted over 2 1/2 hours. There was very little rain but an impressive light show. It became most impressive when a bolt of lightning hit a laser sailboat less than 500 feet from us and fried it. We knew something had been hit at the time and were relieved it was not us. With the amount of electronics we have on board, that could have put a significant damper on our departure from Bermuda! We have the tallest mast in the Yacht Club at the moment so appreciate the divine intervention. A laser is a small boat with no electronics, generally used for racing in the harbor.
Bob has been enjoying touring the island on a scooter. Driving on the left is becoming very familiar. We also drove on the left in the Turks and Caicos. Along the way we have seen some small Bermuda farms growing food for the island, and have enjoyed local tomatoes and lettuce.
This is the final prep of getting ready to leave Bermuda for the Azores. The early months of this trip seemed to slide slowly by with our excited anticipation of crossing to the Mediterranean. Now that we are only days away everything seems in high speed. Two friends joining us as crew are arriving, and we are finishing some boat projects and all of the provisioning. Tuesday we have a meeting with the Bermuda Weather Service for a personal weather briefing for our route. In the meantime, our other weather routing service has already given us the green light for a Wednesday departure.
We are expecting this leg to take about 14 days to sail from Bermuda to the Azores. After a few weeks there, we will sail on to Gibraltar, then to Morocco.
(click) Bermuda Day parade video