Saturday

Part of the reason to depart when we did was because a cold front was forecasted to cross eastern US a few days behind us. sweep out about 1/3 of the way to Bermuda, stall, and dissipate as a warm front. Everything went as forecasted except that it didn't stall, it kept coming, right behind us all the way. It was the reason we had the strong winds. "Marine Synopsis - A low pressure system passing to the northwest will induce moderate to strong winds through Saturday evening while a cold front nears Bermuda. The front will stall in the vicinity, decreasing the winds and impart showers through the weekend, before dissipating on Monday. "So that front, after chasing us for a week, has caught us, and will sit on us for awhile. After five days of 20-30 knots, it is now calm, no wind, and raining.
We had wanted to arrive just at daybreak before customs opened, anchor, make the dinghy, then go to customs after we organized. Strong wind and we were making our schedule when Bermuda Radio called us and told us to delay arrival at the sea bouy until 06:00 when a cruise ship was arriving. So we slowed down, the second largest cruise ship in the world, "Festival of the Seas", arrived, and we followd her in, were directed to the Customs Dock, where we made fast to land. An hour later were anchored in Convict Bay, asleep.
Sleep, wonderful sleep. Both of us awoke about noon, groggy and fuzzy. Some straightening up, and a shower (hot water because the engine had been running.) We decided to take a bus ride from St Georges at the north east end of the island, around the fish hook shaped island to the dockyard and cup village at the north west end. When you have plenty of time, and want to see Bermuda, the bus is a great ride. If you want to get to the America's Cup Village, it takes a long time and you see a lot of Bermuda. In the middle of the ride there is a transfer to another bus route we had to figured out. A note is that there is no public service on Bermuda that you can pay for at the location of the service. You can't pay the driver; you must buy tokens at a ticket office. So far we had figured out how to buy tickets and how to transfer.
We made it to the village about the time people were leaving after the Saturday race. A few weeks ago Normandie had bought tickets to get into the village, and we had printed copies, so getting in was not an issue. The village is just like it is on TV, or when you go to Americascup.com. And the boats were there. You could see them, and once again they are just like on TV. I was totally impressed. This is the real thing. Cotton had bought for us grandstand tickets for Sunday so we knew we were coming back. Both of us were exhausted so we did not stay long, then stumbled back to the bus stop for the interminably long ride back to St Georges.
After a passage filled with weather, we had made it to Bermuda, and the America's Cup Races.
Bill Doar
s/v Advent II