Thursday 22 November, Bermuda day 2, St.George’s: Move to yet another dock and then finally discover St.George’s town.
Very calm night, but full moon (as I joke about it) kept me awake most of the night. We wake up to very dark sky with threatening clouds.
This morning a small ferry comes in, and we are in its place – Cloudy Bay needs to be docked elsewhere. So the dock master made plans to reshuffle the boats which are docked in the inner harbor. s/v Betelgeuse was supposed to leave this morning and us take their place, but they postponed the departure due to strong winds in the next couple of days. So options for us would be either go out and anchor (and probably lose the internet, roll in the creeping swell and worry about the anchor holding) or raft up on the outside of s/v Gale, a 66ft SWAN from Huntington NY.
Well, there are worse boats to moor up against, Glen says, joking. Gale’s captain kindly agrees to us rafting up and we have a plan just 10 minutes before the ferry’s arrival.
The moment we fold down the cockpit tent for better visibility while we maneuver, it starts chucking it down. A full downpour. The rain we wanted to rinse all the salt off the fittings has arrived at the worst possible moment. Needless to say we get soaked immediately. This little mis-adventure will be added to Mr. Sansom’s payback bill!
We tie up to s/v Gale right on time before the wind picks up, pushing Cloudy Bay away from them for the moment. And just as we finish tying up and adjusting the springs, rain stops. Perfect timing, wasn’t it?! Now we have two drenched crew onboard (and we feel bad for Gale’s crew, they were out in the rain to get our lines), a soaked cockpit, and decks full of water all the way to the gunwale. That’s how hard it rained.
Glen goes into the usual mode of wiping everything off, adjusting the lines and fenders 100 times! And puts our big blow up fenders on the water across the stern to stop lapping in our aft cabin. Let’s see how that works.
Meanwhile, clock is ticking. We were planning to go visit the town in between rain showers, and the next one looks like it’s closing up on us. Nevertheless, we head out.
The town of St. George holds the title of being the first community to be settled in Bermuda. In 1609, the Sea Venture – an English ship bound for Virginia with Sir George Somers at the helm – wrecked on the reefs surrounding the island. The settlers aboard the ship all survived and made the east end of the island their home. St. George’s was officially settled in 1612 and became the center of life and the capital for almost 200 years before the designation moved to the City of Hamilton in 1815.
St. George’s is the oldest continuously inhabited English settlement in the Western Hemisphere, and was selected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000. The architecture of St. George’s has been well preserved, with some of the earliest buildings and street plan still intact.
Armed with this information, we wander the town. First up Water Street, a narrow cobbled stone lane with colorful 17th century buildings home to few shops and restaurants. Then along Somers’ Wharf, home to more quaint small buildings and arty shops. One of these is The Island Shop where we meet Tania, a very nice lady who used to work at Bermuda Tourism Authority. We have a long chat with her, during which she tells us all about the huge success of the America’s Cup, which was held here last year in Hamilton Harbor. And interesting facts about day to day life here on the island.
The Somers Wharf itself is very nicely preserved, and has nice view over the harbour. It continues with Penno’s Wharf, where we end up at the World Heritage Center. Chatting to the receptionist here, we learn more about this quaint colourful town. All the roofs in the town are white and look like they covered in glass-fiber over tiles. But we are informed the tiles are actually limestone slabs with a layer of binding cement over all of it, then painted with a waterproof paint that also contains a biocide, because all the domestic water in Bermuda is collected from the roofs. Certainly non of these roofs are going to get blown off by a hurricane. We wonder why others in the Caribbean don’t copy this technique. Cost we guess.
Returning towards town center we stop at St. Peter’s Church, Their Majesties Chapel, the oldest Anglican Church outside the British Isles. It was originally built from Bermuda cedar in 1612.
After all this exploring and history, we settle for an ice cream in the middle of town, then we pop back to check up on Cloudy Bay. And find that while we’ve been away s/v Gale’s crew has tied lines across to the other side of the dock to pull Cloudy Bay away from Gale, and at the same time pull Gale 2m off the dock. All this because they have found Gale is aground at low tide (she draws 10ft) so she needed to be further off the dock into the deeper water. If we’d been around, Christian (the captain) would have asked us to go on the dock while they rafted up outside of us. Glen would not have liked that, so glad we were in town! After apologizing for not being around we promptly went back to town.
We carried on exploring the north end of St. George’s. We come across Somers’ Garden, a beautifully manicured park. It is said that the heart of Sir George Somers (the founder of Bermuda) is buried here. A traditional sail loft caught our eyes, and we glanced through the open door. This side of the town is still quaint, but away from the UNESCO preservation area we find it more run down, even with some abandoned buildings. A good finding was the laundromat, where a visit will be due on the next rainy day (all thermal gear which we wore during the passage will need de-salting!).
Back on Cloudy Bay we have lunch then Glen puts the forward cabin back together again after drying everything out. Then he sets to fixing his GoCycle. In Connecticut, the servo that changes the gears stopped working, but we didn’t get a replacement till just a few weeks ago. The job is pretty quick, an hour or so, and Glen declares he can probably take this bike apart with his eyes shut now!
Meanwhile I am on the massive job of editing the 350 video clips from the yard time in Herrington. All very interesting stuff but it is painful and time consuming to edit it all. And it will certainly be a VERY long video to watch … maybe our viewers won’t like it, but we really don’t want to split it into multiple parts. We also realize just how many jobs we managed to complete in our time there.
While we were focused on our jobs, Eva from s/v Gale comes over to invite us for her birthday celebrations. Invitation which we gladly honor, and we spend the rest of the evening having a great time with the cheerful crew inside the Swan 66. Christian shows us around. It’s impressive, like a Swan, but Oana observes the galley is not much bigger than CB’s and the engine room … well, there is no comparison. Glen would barely fit in there let alone have room to fix anything. It all looks very tidy and engineered … but so so tight.
We have a really nice time. They were a fair bit ahead of us on the alcohol front (!) but dancing and merriment continued. They seem like a great group of people. We had thought we had it cold in USA before we left, but they showed us photos of several inches of snow on the decks just a few days ago in Long Island! They even made a snowman in the cockpit!
By midnight we retired back to Cloudy Bay and were soon snug under our duvet. Hmmm, we were going to stow it away yesterday. Will it ever get warm again?!