Arrived in Bermuda
Saxon Blue's Blog
Harvey Jones and Andrea Stokes
Sat 18 Dec 2010 00:35
Well, here we are in Bermuda, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It's hard to pick out the individual events of the voyage now, they've all merged into one mass of getting up, doing watches, either enjoying myself or feeling bad and then going back to bed. Today was rough again with steep, confused seas but the wind kept us going along at a good rate. Just as well as we wanted to get into St Georges Harbour before dark.
Andrea and I did our usual 0400-0800 watch and we both felt OK today in spite of the conditions so that was great. Watching the sun come up is always exciting and the sea seems so much less scary once you can actually see what it's up to. We were getting splashed all the time but it was warm enough not to be too worried. Once Bill took over, I went back to bed for a couple of hours and then got up feeling good - and hungry.
I had some crackers and cheese for lunch and then pottered around helping Kali on her watch during the afternoon. We'd had to change our approach to Bermuda from the Southern one to the Northern as a result of the wind changing in the night. Bermuda is fringed with reefs for miles away from the island, particularly on the Western and Northern sides so we had to track right around them before we could enter the Town Cut into St Georges Harbour from the East. All the way along, we were about 10 miles away from land but didn't actually see it until we were almost in.
We had to wait outside the harbour entrance for a freighter to leave and then we were given permission to enter by the very nice and extremely English Coastguard. It's such a treat to listen to them give their measured, easy to understand forecast rather than the US equivalent gabbling on without taking a breath. Anyway, they told us to go straight to the Customs dock to get our clearance. That didn't take long, just fill in a load of forms and pay 35 dollars each and we were free to go. We actually only went to the other side of the creek and we're now tied up alongside the town quay.
We got tied up just after dark so all we've done since is eat, shower and tidy up. The houses around look like toy-town as they don't have any gutters, the walls just go straight into the roof and it's all brilliant white. They look like they're made out of plastic. Around them are palm trees and we're all sitting here now in shorts and sandals. It's incredible to think that we had to tip boiling water on the docklines before we could undo them when we left Hampton on Tuesday and it's only 600 miles away.
Anyway, we're off to watch Battlestar Galactica while eating chocolate and drinking Champagne (the others) or Lemonade (me). It's amazing to be here and really astonishing that Andrea is going to fly home in a couple of days time.
Harvey
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