Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

May 20 10:42GMT
32º22.743N 64º40.139’W
SOG (Speed over Ground): 0

Yesterday evening started off in St Georges Dinghy and Yacht club. There was supposed to be food laid on followed by prize giving for the boats that came up from Antigua. In the end there was no food – something to do with the cook going AWOL and no substitute available. The prize giving did occur though. Windancer IV won a couple of prizes in the Multihull division – first and last. That’s because she’s the only Multihull in the fleet going east this year. First prize was a bottle of rum. I say was because now it’s just a bottle. Rum punches both at the bar and back on the boat were the order of the evening. We stayed up quite late chatting about stuff and each other so we’ve learned one or two things. So far no one seems to be a closet axe murderer which is comforting.

Today’s goal is to leave as soon as we can. There are some lows coming in from the west which we really would like to get ahead of. The forecast suggests that the faster boats than can leave sooner will suffer the least from the bad weather associated with these fronts. Before we leave we have three or four chores. We need to have two of the reefing lines fixed. A rigger is due this morning to fix these. We need to fill up the fuel tanks. We need to do one last reprovisioning and we need to check out. With a bit of luck we’ll be off soon after midday. We’ll see.

The delays at Newark were not too bad and we arrived in Bermuda in good time. On the flight, I sat next to a pro-soccer player who invited us to go and watch them (Baltimore – Crystal Palace) play Bermuda tomorrow. This should be an interesting evening out. With free tickets we can always bail early (and hit the bars) if we get bored. I was able to get enough tickets to include the rest of the crew.

We went from the airport straight to the boat and met John and the rest of the crew. I have not met John before but we’ve Skyped a lot. It felt like meeting an old friend. We shared a beer and some chat and were able to leave some of my luggage on the boat.

We then walked to the local ferry and took the ferry to Hamilton. It was a bit troublesome finding somewhere to buy tickets. Oddly enough you can’t buy them where you pick up the ferry. We asked several people where to get tickets and got a few different pieces of advice – it seemed. We thought we were running out of time as we were using a timetable given to the boat crews by the ARC organizers. Turned out the timetable was out of date and we had an extra 30 mins. That allowed Helen and I to grab something to eat.

The ferry trip took just over an hour where we all got to know eachother a bit more. At the dock we parted having made plans to meet up at the stadium tomorrow.

Helen and I have now checked in. The room is pretty nice. Soon we’ll be back out to see more of the town and eventually walk to the “House of India” for our usual Friday curry.