Offshore passages in a small boat can range from sedate and benign to downright dangerous and vomitous. Among the top determinants of how a trip goes are the seaworthiness of the boat you’re on, the amenities it has and, of course, the weather and sea conditions.

I’ve made three trips to Bermuda from New England over the years. The contrasts among the passages reflect the evolution of equipment—primarily electronics—and my own yachting experience. The first two were more like camping. The most recent was akin to glamping.

My first trip to the “Onion Patch” was in 1980 on a 56-foot, home-built ferro-cement ketch, which, while sturdy, comfortable and beautifully fitted out, was far less sophisticated than my most recent ride. We left Scituate, Massachusetts, that October for the tiny beauty spot in the North Atlantic some 700 nautical miles away. In variable conditions, the trip took us five nights and change, averaging about 6 knots. Compared to what people sail with today, we left port with a minimal electronics suite: VHF and single-sideband radios, and a loran unit one of our crew bought to make him feel slightly more confident we’d find the island.

We navigated primarily by old-school dead reckoning: compass, sextant, chronometer, paper charts and a taffrail spinner that required regular clearing of sargassum in the Gulf Stream. With our pre-GPS navigation tools, we managed to make landfall in Bermuda on our first try. The heavy boat, while generally seakindly in the variable conditions we encountered during our five nights in transit, was a lumbering leviathan with an abnormally uneasy motion downwind. We determined that we had entered the Gulf Stream when we observed a horizon-to-horizon cloud bank ahead of us and stuck a thermometer in a pot full of seawater pumped into the galley sink that showed a sharp rise in temperature.

While that boat was beautifully appointed below, there were a few amenities I wish we’d had. One was a shower. As I recall, my only shower in six days came courtesy of a metal fire extinguisher full of water heated on the galley stove. It was primitive, but it felt luxurious.

My second trip was the 1988 Newport Bermuda race. For that one, I sailed as journalist/crew on a famous racing yacht then called War Baby. The 61-foot Sparkman & Stephens-designed aluminum sloop began life as Dora IV, and later, was Ted Turner’s Tenacious. Tenacious gained notoriety as being the corrected-time winner of the infamous 1979 Fastnet race during which 15 sailors died in a Force 10 gale in the Irish Sea.

By the time I got to her, she was owned by Bermudian Warren Brown and was still capable of hauling the freight. I recall we spent three nights at sea in race mode, which meant lots of trips to the foredeck for knuckle-chafing headsail changes as conditions shifted from light to heavy and back. While that trip was a thrill, I don’t recall even having a fire extinguisher to shower with. I also remember off-watches napping on sail bags on the salon sole. I was a younger man and it didn’t really matter. I was happy.

Enter my trip to Bermuda in June of this year. I was invited by Palm Beach Motor Yachts, a sponsor of this year’s Newport Bermuda Race, to make the run aboard one of the company’s 70-foot, lightweight, Down East-style cruisers. Rather than lumbering in calms or chasing wind and Gulf Stream eddies, we hauled ass straight down the rhumb line at 19 knots.

After a ceremonial start at the back of the fleet in Newport, we rocketed the 635 nautical miles to Bermuda in about 30 hours.
With the exception of a few hours of gently lumpy seas, the weather and sea conditions were postcard perfect. In contrast to my previous trips, we had the benefit of air conditioning, gyro stabilization and a NASA-grade array of electronics. I spent some off-watch time streaming a sci-fi series over the Starlink system. It was almost surreal. We arrived at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club about 14 hours ahead of the earliest race finishers.

While those earlier trips more resembled camping, the Palm Beach ride was bona fide glamping. I wouldn’t trade those ’80s runs for anything—sailing is more hardwired to the moods of the sea and sky—but I could be fairly tagged as spoiled by the last one. 

This article was originally published in the Fall 2024 issue.