13. Crossing the Atlantic 1/4 - Bermuda repairs

So, afternoon in Georgetown, Bermuda. I am sitting in the cockpit and I have a little bit of sailor's blues I think. I achieved something, for me, amazing which is to sail across an ocean and do a six day passage to Bermuda from New York. Why depressed? Well, I wasn't expecting the breakages. I wasn't thinking I was that inexperienced. I wasn't realising quite how high the learning mountain was and how low in the foothills I was. And that, maybe, I am past being able to do this.

If you can't get up the mast you are fucked. And, on my own, I'm struggling to get up the mast.

Marine engines break (though to be fair, the engine is fine) and I am no mechanic. If you can't fix it you are fucked.

Electrics break and need fixing. I am no electrician.

Ditto plumber.

I have critical systems that if they break I can't fix them myself.

So.... that's sobering.

And I am 65. How much time do I have for this learning journey?

And I have to get moving or hurricane season is here.

Priorities.

But the experience was amazing. Edgy life. Real. Intense. Challenging. An experience I couldn't have had any other way.

Thank you, God.

How to progress?

Make a list.

It's always that. Break it down.

But first sleep.

No, first pray.

And then go in and sign in with the Port Authorities. By rowboat.

Then I sleep.

18 hours sleep later. Better spirits!

I had to haul anchor and move the boat. Was demotivated to do the task but I was too close to another boat. Fine. Between wind, manual windlass, tired deckhand, we still managed to get it done without any fuss.

The theory of comfort is the enemy is fine until your manual windlass glares at you, saying, "Come on then."

Water pressure on the blink. Not sure what's going on but will need looking at.

But analysing tasks, breaking them down, list, it all starts to feel a bit more manageable.

The list is:

Get up the mast and deal with the broken lazy jack line.

Investigate water-pressure pump.

Stiff throttle cable controls.

Aft bilge pump is intermittently not working.

But first I have to arrive and go and check in at the Customs House and check out the lay of the land.

I have moved onto the wall so that tradesmen can get to the boat to do the work. It's a nice place to be moored up to. I can skip the whole process of rowing the dinghy and lovely to have access to marina facilities, water, and showers. And restaurants, bars and shops.

So, my repairs took six days.

I went up the mast myself. Someone whom I had approached to do it kept letting me down. Fine. With help from a fellow sailor who, it turns out, lived right next door to our old marina White Rocks in Pasadena, it was soon done.

Found Henry, also known as Henk to his friends, to help me with the mechanics. New water pump, overhauled throttle and gear control, rewired bilge pump, inspected and tightened steering system. Good guy.

Specialises in boat work that he fell into from car mechanicking. The Bermuda economy is just as broken as anywhere else. Henk charges $100 per hour.

"You must be rich," I said.

"You must be joking," he said. They have a cost of living crisis same as everywhere else.

Yet Bermuda is amazing because of the people. So kind and generous. They are just the most amazingly friendly people. Guess that's what happens when 17,535 people rub along on 21 square miles of island in the middle of nowhere.

Met fellow sailors. You always meet fellow sailors.

Auke from Holland who became my Horta sailing buddy. In his late 60s he did a massive Atlantic loop Biscay-Cape Verde-Suriname-Trinidad-Caribbean-Bermuda and back across to Horta. Two years of bucket list stuff. Resourceful, cheerful and inspirational kind of guy. He documented his journey here: https://www.polarsteps.com/abcselbach

Pete, crewing on a big shiny sailboat, who was from Bodkin Creek, next creek along from White Rocks. And used to own a Freedom 45 which was weirdly coincidental. So helpful with hoisting me up the mast and and gave me sage advice and help with my solar wiring. Another good guy.

I have lots of thoughts about connectivity onboard and will write about that later (connectivity article tbc) but it is an issue especially if we talk about weather. I use PredictWind (predictwind.com) and Windy (windy.com) and they are amazing apps. You can forecast, do pretty decent departure planning, routing analysis, and frankly the apps offer analysis in excruciating detail. Which is terrific. When you are connected. But of course the minute you go offline you have nothing. When I left New York I had a very clear picture of the first three or four, maybe five days. And then you are hoping that prevailing winds and weather follows seasonal patterns. Or you bite the bullet and get a system to get online so you can download weather. If you do Starlink you can be as connected as you are at home, to the point of streaming Netflix in the middle of the Atlantic. Which for me is too weird and too expensive. Between no connectivity and Starlink you have a range of options. With various sat-phone devices you can get skinny email and weather grib-file downloads, again at a price.

My solution, such as it is, is a Garmin Mini2.

It's a small device that hangs under my spray dodger. It connects to an app on my phone and I can text friends and family, which is about the right level of connectivity for me, and it does weather. I can request a weather forecast for the next few days and it gives wind, currents, precipitation - not in great detail but enough for a general picture which is all I need. Except that as soon as you have a forecast for your location you are sailing away from it. And I only learned that you actually can set up a forecast for multiple locations (for instance your destination) after I left the shore and my internet connection!

In any event, I found that leaving New York I had a great picture of weather for the first three days or so, and after that I felt a bit blind. I had forecasts via Mini2 texts from a friend, which was fine, but looking at leaving Bermuda for a maybe three week crossing I decided to engage a professional weather router. Enter Chris Parker (https://mwxc.com/)

He is quite well known in the sailing community and I knew people who had used him. More spookily, while I was debating wether or not to go ahead, a random delivery skipper walked past Beyond and we struck up conversation about departing and weather. He shares that, "Chris Parker saved my life twice."

Good enough for me.

I signed up for a package giving me a number of credits. Texting him I would request a forecast based on my location and objectives and a few hours later would come a detailed forecast and recommendations.

It was bloody fantastic and I cannot recommend it highly enough. With GPS technology you always know where you are - but you don't necessarily know where you should go. Chris Parker's service takes the guesswork out of passage planning. Every three or four days I would send off a request for a forecast and it was really enjoyable to have the forecast messages ping in one after the other.

Six days in Georgetown. Very cool place. Fell in love just a little bit.

And then you get into the last push to get off. Provisions, laundry, last repairs, stowing stuff, top up tanks, clear out at customs, and it's always a bit of a messy whirlwind.

I got off at about 11am on Wednesday the 25th June 2025, estimating 18 days to get to Horta, the Azores. Just the North Atlantic to cross to get there.