Sail yourself from the Virgin Islands to Bermuda and you’ll encounter a number of working waterfront outposts, places where dedicated individuals provide the services that make this sort of travel possible. Aboard a 44-foot sloop the trip takes a little over six days. In our case it required the services of a commercial marina and a yacht club that rents slips, a private weather forecaster who provides a daily overview to small boats all over the western North Atlantic, and a government-sponsored forecasting operation that also keeps tabs on boat traffic in and out of St. George, Bermuda.
Sapphire’s Marina is a low-key operation on the back side of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, facing St. John (also in the USVI) and Tortola in the British Virgins. It provides most of the usual services, from slips to showers to e-mail and access to a nearby beach. Apparently it used to provide more, but today the emphasis is on condos and other things and the waterfront isn’t as active as it once was. Still, under the auspices of a boat management firm based in nearby Red Hook, it’s a short- or long-term base for a fair number of sailboats including at least one day-cruise outfit, plus several individuals who take out fishing parties. Sapphire’s location suits it as a jumping-off place for “down-island” cruises to the BVI and beyond. After availing ourselves of Boathouse Yacht Management’s services for a couple of small repair jobs and – at the end of our stay – the marina’s water hose, we departed for a fuel dock around the corner in downtown St. Thomas. There, we filled out tanks with pricey diesel fuel (well over $9 per gallon in the USVI) and set off for Bermuda, 840 miles away. We would sail most of the way, but we’d still need sufficient fuel to keep moving in a calm and run a generator each day.
The shoreside situation in St. George, Bermuda, where we arrived nearly a week later, was similar. Our choice there was the Dinghy Club, a members-only operation that also rents space to visiting yachts willing to tie up stern-to along a concrete jetty in front of the clubhouse. The place offers a bar, showers, parking space for your scooter if you rent one, a dumpster, a water hose and a certain amount of conviviality with the folks aboard whatever boat happens to be next door. The only downside was the access to all boats via narrow planks from the jetty to everyone’s afterdeck. No one went overboard while we were there, but it seemed a distinct possibility, particularly if the bar up at the clubhouse was serving. A manager came by at least once daily, and when the Bermuda Race crews come to town in late June the Dinghy Club is a hopping place. Again, no fuel – before jumping off for Maine we motored over to a neat little Shell station located on the St. George waterfront that caters to cars, motor scooters and boats large and small. Again, the fuel was very expensive, priced by the liter to make the dollar amount seem a little smaller.
Offshore, of course, the major ingredient in any passage is weather information, the more of it the better. We relied on two very different sources: the well-known “Southbound II” service and Bermuda Radio. Southbound II Coastal originates in Burlington, Ontario, where an engaging amateur named Herb Hilgenberg runs a daily seminar via single-sideband radio every afternoon at 4 p.m. Eastern time. Boats check in, giving their positions and other pertinent information, and Herb responds to each in turn, providing a detailed three- or four-day forecast. While much of his information is derived from satellites and other official sources, the observations from the individual boats are useful as well, and the whole 90-minute exercise, complete with comments and local observations from the boats, is a welcome daily diversion offshore. Hilgenberg doesn’t charge the boats for his services, but larger entities such as the Bermuda Race do hire him from time to time.
Bermuda Radio, sponsored by the government of Bermuda, combines weather information with security and traffic management. Boats arriving in Bermuda are required to check in and provide information about themselves (which is entered into a database). There’s a radar system that keeps track of movements around the island, reminiscent of an air traffic control system, and Bermuda Radio puts out weather information at regular intervals. After arriving we made an appointment to visit the facility high atop a hill in St. George where the man in charge showed us a variety of systems and provided a four-day forecast for the region as far north as the New England coast. Comparing it with Herb’s for the same region, the consensus aboard our boat was that it was safe to head for Maine.
Sailing trips can be magic, but magic doesn’t make them happen. A lot of hard work goes into them, much of it done by shoreside individuals and firms – for example, the Bermuda-based sailmaker who sold us a replacement winch handle or the grocery stores and fuel docks at each end of the trip – whose business it is to make offshore recreation possible in the first place. Without them, as they say, you couldn’t get here from there.
David D. Platt is editor of Working Waterfront.