Bermuda

I’m cheating a bit about Bermuda here, since Zanshin hasn’t sailed to Bermuda yet.  But I did sail there as a crewmember of Challenge Accepted in the 2022 Newport-Bermuda Race, so I’ll sneak this country into my list. And perhaps one day I’ll visit the country with Zanshin as a stop between the USA and the Caribbean island chain.

The link above goes to my page with all the pictures of the race, both mine and from the other crewmembers. It was a fun event and we had a bit of everything during the course of the race. Storms. Calm. Water shortage. Good food. Great company.

I’d do that race again if offered the opportunity. I’m not sure that I’d sail my own boat to Bermuda, though. It isn’t directly on the way and it isn’t the cheapest of destinations, either.

The country of Bermuda is not part of the Caribbean because it lies so far north. But due to the Gulf Stream it has a warm and congenial climate. It is, in my mind, the Switzerland of the Americas. It is not only clean and well-kept, but outrageously expensive. There is a lot of old money in Bermuda. It was the financial sector, not the agriculture (onions) which made this island affluent.

Return

I had started my search for a hotel room too late and couldn’t find a thing that was under $1000. One AirBnB place for only $300 or so a night turned out to be a cabin in a Lagoon 380 catamaran that wasn’t even at a dock, but anchored out. Fortunately I only had one night to find accommodations for, and ended up sleeping on the boat.

I didn’t have any chance to truly explore the island and most of my sightseeing was done while sitting in the back seat of my cab while driving to the airport. Had we done better during the race things would have been more relaxed, but in the end the timing worked to my advantage.