Monday 25 May,  2015

St George's Harbour 32 22.8N  64 40.4W

Today's Blog by Richard  (Time zone: BST -4.0; UTC -4.0)

Hello again, dear readers. The quality of the blog will probably deteriorate rapidly, now that I am back on board.

It is great to be sailing again on Serendipity after a year off for good behaviour. I have rekindled my relationship with The Pit (blogs passim) and we are at peace with each other, at least when the Kango hammer, Life Tag alarm, water maker, engine and one-eyed monster are asleep. (The one-eyed monster creeps into The Pit while I’m asleep and terrifies me. It is David wearing his head torch looking for victims – err sorry, tools).

I am somewhat alarmed that my presence on board seems to have sparked off a series of problems (for which, no doubt, I will be blamed). You will have already read earlier accounts of the generator and The Frog but there have been other unfortunate incidents. We caught a fish the other day, the first for three months:

Whilst catching a fish should be a cause for celebration, it turned out to be a barracuda, and not safe to eat.

On arriving at St George’s Harbour, Bermuda, we were required to clear Customs and were asked to moor alongside the Customs jetty. The crew was suitably impressed with David’s boat handling skills as we, effortlessly, drifted perfectly onto the jetty and tied up. It was only when we were leaving the Customs office that we noticed we had failed to furl the mainsail when we motored in and the crew now believes that it was the errant sail that caused us to drift onto the jetty rather than the skipper.

This was a first in a lifetime experience for David but, sadly, not for me.

This morning, Terry and I went to see what St George’s had to offer while David and Peter emptied, and restowed the lazarette (a weekly task, seemingly). The town is charming, indeed, a bit too so. All the buildings are freshly painted and have white roofs – it reminds me a bit of the Prisoner.

We had been told that the Bermudan people were very kind and generous and we experienced this at short hand. David and Peter had dropped Terry and I off with the Frog, which we were planning to carry to the sail loft. A lady came up and said to us “you’re not going to carry that all the way, are you?”. When we confirmed this, she insisted that she and her husband drive us and the sail over there – we were very grateful.

The Bermudans seem to be quite religious and below are photos of one of their lovely churches and some church ruins.

The ruins are somewhat tragic as they had almost completed construction when a hurricane hit and wrecked what was there – the church has never been used.

In Bermuda, you are allowed to trespass, but only during the day:

Terry and I visited the East End Mini Yacht Club but we violated their dress code:

In case you can’t read this, it says “Clothing must not be excessively torn, dirty, tattered or emit an unpleasant odour”. We were also amused by the rule that “no excessively low or baggy pants such that a person’s undergarments or buttocks are exposed”. No builders allowed, then.

We had a fish and chip supper last night. As we were ordering, Peter was prevaricating when the waiter said, inexplicably, “you must be Terry”! He won’t live that down for some time.

We are now on the way to Hamilton to watch the Bermuda Day parade.