After transiting two full sides of the Bermuda Triangle, Clare and I celebrate at the thought of making it through unscathed. We even buy a mug to commemorate the occasion. Then, some days after arriving in Bermuda, I settle in front of the chart plotter to plan our trip over to the other side of the island. I flick the power switch…nothing happens.

I flip the switch again. I remove the fixed-mount plotter and check the connections on the back. Then I get out the volt-meter, more tests. Everything is spotless, crisp, and humming…so what gives? I’m about to start getting upset, but then I remember a poster we just saw recently showing all of the shipwrecks that surround this reef encircled island–hey, at least our plotter got us safely into harbor.

So I get on the phone with company tech support as our unit is still less than a year old and under warranty. “Try yaddi-yadda…nothing? Alright then, you got a bad unit. Send it to blah blah blah with the emailed form, call us with a tracking number, and we’ll get a new one in the mail.” Fair enough, can’t complain about that policy or service. We even make it to the post office that day just before closing carrying a special Customs form that relieves us from having to pay any duty (which in this isolated island country is not cheap). The box is in the mail and we call Stateside with a tracking number confirmation…hot damn, it’s a wrap.

We continue our trip as planned, but with some rough charts downloaded off the internet. We remain cautious but at least the weather is in our favor.  The seas are so calm that we not only have fantastic visibility, but the chance to comfortably anchor miles offshore near the infringing reef and dive a couple of wrecks. The whole escapade lasts two nights and is absolutely stunning.

With the weather due to change we head for protection, making it into Great Sound just in time for sundowners at anchor.   The following morning there’s a knock on our hull…um, apparently we’ve anchored on the finish line of the America’s Cup. Oopsies, yep we’ll move. Granted, the race hasn’t officially started and the various teams are only practicing, but it’s our first time physically witnessing these sailing space-ships and it is an impressive sight. We even dinghy around the Cup Village and watch well-oiled work crews pluck these carbon-fiber creations from the water with cranes, and then separate the fixed-wing masts from the hulls before pushing everything behind the closed doors of their well-sponsored workshop hangers.

Each team’s racing catamaran is trailed by a fleet of high-dollar support boats, and all of them bunk-down at the end of the day in the Village, a sort of jetty-island created just for this purpose, and which adjoins an already massive marina catering to super yachts. Billboard-sized advertising graphics and professionally-manicured team photographs are splayed across building walls everywhere. Heaps of flags flutter from all available poles. Every nautical surface crackles from fresh polish, while collared deckhands pace their endlessly-tiered decks in white socks so as not to leave any blemish. The dock-cleats are custom-cast with embedded LED lights. You can practically smell the money pouring out of the idling exhaust pipes of the some the world’s most impressive yachts. Truly, these people operate in a different reality.

And then it’s on to Bermuda’s capitol, the bustling city of Hamilton. Happy Bermy-Day to everyone that didn’t catch the 6-hour parade that strolls through the city center, flanked on either side by sprawling family BBQ’s that pour in and out of the streets, everyone in-step with the thumping dance beats. But be sure to bring your Dark ’n Stormies with you from home, cause ain’t no one selling nothing nowhere on this biggest of national holidays.

But that doesn’t mean they’re not generous. Everywhere we go the Bermudan people are warm and open, offering big smiles and easy answers with accents somewhere between news-anchor British and Rasta-infused Jamaican. White, black, brown, they got ‘em all here, even a full rainbow of colored shorts with knee-high navy socks.

One local even let’s us use his house—more like a waterfront mansion, Clare insists being there was an “experience”—to do laundry while he’s out helping with the races (thanks again Hal), and we have a few good mash-ups with some of the other visiting cruisers (cheers Lady Rebel). A seasoned solo skipper shares some valuable intel and missing charts (thumbs-up Martin). Doesn’t seem to be a bad apple in the lot.

Turns out even the post gets a bit muddled when it passes through the Triangle, but our chart plotter eventually clears customs, we pick it up, and sadly that means we can go. With all the current commotion and our new connections we don’t really want to leave, but we crunch the numbers and realize we need to cover 4000 miles in 6 weeks!

To difficult goodbyes.