June 5 - 9 -- Bermuda, Aboard Rusee de Jersey

My flight from Newark was flawless and on time. Well I screwed up by leaving my cellphone charging in the the waiting area. But after a frantic search in all my many pockets at my seat I ran off the plane and got it.    At Bermuda’s airport I paid an unexpected $35 departure tax. It's because I’m not flying out and  it’s $50 if you fly, but built into the airfare, so you don't notice.   Yves met me, we walked to a nearby beach, and dinked to “Russee de Jersey”. The only problem was a rather fast "slow leak" from the dink’s two tubes. My seat got wet in the light chop. It is not a RIB.    Rusee, Yves explained, translates from the French as clever or trickster as in the English word “ruse”.  When Yves tried to register her, Rusee was too close to Rosee, which was used by someone else. He bought her on the Channel Island of Jersey. He  asked and voila: The Ruse from Jersey. In the foreground.

Built in 1987, she is one of thousands of Kelts that were launched before that French company too went bankrupt. Yves has sailed various boats since he was a teenager and has seven Atlantic crossings under his belt, one solo! He made major structural changes to Russee including extending her waterline by adding a sugar scoop style swim platform, perhaps two feet long.

One interesting feature is that the main halyard runs from the top of the mast to a block which he attaches to the head of the main and back up. This reduces the force needed to raise the main by half, allowing Yves’ lovely, wife, Dominique, a dancer (who had brought Rusee to Bermuda from the Caribbean with him) to raise it with a winch that is not electrified. But it makes the halyard twice as long, too. The same main halyard is also used to raise the dink to the foredeck nightly. The propeller of the dink is set into a plastic bucket so that it does not mar the deck. This could not work on ILENE unless we got rid of the wing-like trim tabs on the outboard. Lifting the dink not only deters theft, but retards marine growth on her bottom. It only grows during the portion of the day when she floats.
Upon arrival, even before unpacking, we motored to the south end of Castle Harbor and re-anchored. I also learned how to raise the centerboard by cranking its line, led to the starboard coach-roof winch. This board does not swing up from a forward pivot point, but slides up through a diagonal hole in the bottom of the boat. And it is not heavy like a keel but is more of a centerboard. The enclosure of the hole through which it slides divides the two forward cabins.
We spent the rest of the day just talking before dinner, dishes and bed. My berth is aft of the rudder post and large: perhaps 6.5 by 4 feet, and runs athwartship with my head to starboard and feet to port. It has two small opening ports facing aft which let in the cool night breeze but have to be kept closed when underway, to prevent waves from potentially entering.
Yves patched the leak in the dinghy under Rusee’s strong deck light while I slept.
Our days involved morning repairs and afternoon touring. The cockpit table was missing a dowel upon which two of its four legs pivoted. My idea was to use a piece of pencil and Yves had a round one. We sawed off a 1.5” long piece and sanded it down to decrease its diameter to fit. My thought was to glue it into one hole, let the other end pivot in the adjacent hole and place a screw through most of its length with our “dowel” providing substance for the screw to "bite". But in the end, I somehow misplaced the piece we had created and in searching for it we found the original steel pin that had fallen out. But the repair was improved by mixing up several small batches of two part epoxy (several because each hardens so fast) and using a thin wood coffee stirrer to spread it into the shattering cracks in the ends of the legs to fuse each of them solid. Good for another 20 years.
We pulled the Speedo wheel (and plugged the hole in the bottom of the boat) in order to clean off the growth on it, bathed it in vinegar for an hour, lubricated the “O” rings with Vaseline, reinserted it and then mopped and pumped out the water that gushed in during the second when the hole was unplugged. Rusee’s bilge is rather flat, without a deep sump, so the mopping up process is complicated.
Yves snorkeled under the boat to check and scrape off marine growth. The dink was partially re-inflated to test the fix, and it seemed to hold.

We pulled the Speedo wheel (and plugged the hole in the bottom of the boat) in order to clean off the growth on the speedo, bathed it in vinegar for an hour, lubricated the “O” rings with Vaseline, reinserted it and then mopped and pumped out the water that gushed in during the seconds when the hole was unplugged. Russee’s bilge is rather flat, without a deep sump, so the mopping up process took a while.

Yves snorkeled under the boat to check and scrape off marine growth.    One afternoon we visited the Mid Ocean Club in Tucker’s Town, where we had Dark and Stormys (the national drink of Bermuda), used their WiFi and found another, smaller leak which Yves located and patched that night. One meal was salad and concoction of shell pasta, sweet peas, and Euro style bacon in a light sauce of double creme, lemon juice and chopped fresh mint which I have noted only because I plan to look up the name and recipe for this dish when I get back to Internet

Except for the last night we were in Castle Harbour, a huge harbor (with some shoal areas) inside the northeastern end of the 18 mile long nation – smaller than Manhattan.  

 Its SW side is partially enclosed by a string of islands. One of them, Castle Island has a fortress (castle) on it. The British built the forts here for the same reason that we built so many of our eastern seaboard forts, such as Fort Adams in Newport -- for protection against potential enemies. The British thought of the US and France as such.

This lucky shot got the castle with a White Tailed Tropicbird, the symbol of Bermuda, lower left. The nation, to my eye, has the shape of a large clawless lobster, lying on its back, tail curled in with its head to the ENE.

The cruise ships used to dock in St. George’s Harbour, just north of us, but now dock inside the tip of the lobster’s curled up tail, in Great Sound, the largest harbor, which contains the capital city of Hamilton and Bermuda’s Royal Yacht Club, which is where I stayed when I helped sail “Thai Hot” back to the Harlem YC after the Marion to Bermuda race in about 2007. That was my first multi-day ocean passage and only prior visit to Bermuda. We are securely anchored just behind the eastern tip of land so we hear the ocean’s roar outside but are quite protected. That whole area is called Tucker’s Town and it has a lagoon which is very well protected. We dinked to that lagoon, tied the dink to mangroves and waded ashore in water less than knee deep.

One morning Yves found the head was hard to flush, impacted. Yves asked if I had accidentally flushed toilet paper. He dived and tried to get at the problem from the bottom of the boat. Next he had to undo the end of the sanitary hose leading the discharge from the head to its the seacock. This made a smelly mess in the bilge associated with that seacock; Russee has many small bilges. Finally Yves concluded that the lever that turns the seacock has become disassociated from its ball in partly open position. He did not have a large enough wrench aboard for the replacement, not the part, and to insert it will also require that Rusee be out of the water. So we will “see how it goes” with a wooden plug nearby, just in case. Finally cleanup of the area with pump, turkey baster and then rags handled with rubber gloves and washed with Clorox, seawater and finally fresh water. I cleaned rust from the stainless steel and marks on the decks. Yves’ cleansers worked excellently.

Anther adventure was to the furthest part of Castle Harbor, near the causeway. We passed Tom Moore’s Tavern, since 1652, with four friendly big cats eating.

Then through a park to a posh resort for a beer and WiFi. The resort has a grotto, an underground cavern, with stalactites and stalagmites (I’ve forgotten which are which) and a natural pool of sea water, with steps and a ladder so one can swim. Electric lights dimly light the place but without warming sunlight the water seemed as cold as Maine’s. We each took a refreshing dip.

We hiked to Yves and Dominique’s favorite ice cream stand. It is open six days a week but not Fridays. But the restaurant across the street, the Swizzle Inn, served rum swizzle ice cream so we had dessert before dinner.  The dinghy ride back to Rusee was a long one with the wind in our faces and our 2.5 hp outboard. But last night’s repair held up. No major leaks of air from the tubes.  While we were away we ran the noisy gas powered Honda 2000 electric generator. Also running was the wind generator and the solar panels. The electricity hog is the refrigerator.  An outdoor shower before dinner.

I’m very well equipped for the expected cold Canadian weather, but less so for the t shirt and shorts weather we have had so far and expect to continue to enjoy until about a day before we reach Halifax.  Yves drove the boat to near the airport, anchored and took the dink in to get Greg and his luggage.

It was great to see Greg again and he brought gear for serious ocean fishing. 








Yves drove the boat out into the Atlantic and back into the little bay among the islands, very near to where we had spent the first three nights, but on the outside. But the wind direction and speed and shallow depths caused us go back inside. Next pic shows the inside from the outside. Our anchor was dropped behind the rocks, just at the edge where the yellow turns to blue.

We spent the afternoon catching up, telling sailing stories and with a bottle of rum. This after a delightful swim. The bottom is pure yellow sand without any rocks, pebbles, shells or grasses.  The water near us was only five feet deep. The area is a favorite for local people and day charter captains bring folks out for excursions. I swam over to a boat with two couples and invited them to share our drinks but they declined. A party boat full of about ten young people came. Many of them scaled the cliffs of Castle Rock and jumped into the sea from an estimated 25 feet up. Two beautiful and very fit young mermaids swam by and were attracted by Rusee’s maple leaf flag. Both are squash pros. Melanie was recruited from Yellowknife in Canada to practice her profession in Bermuda and she had invited the others. Her companion was Samantha from Toronto.   Eventually Yves cooked dinner, and we stayed talking till Yves noticed that it was 12:17 AM.

• We motored out of Castle Harbor, around St. David’s Point with St. David’s Light and through the channel into St. George’s Harbor. About five miles. We circled s/v "Argonauta" with Sherry and Giorgio aboard. They have circumnavigated, hung with Yves in the Caribbean, and intend to depart for Halifax with us. We anchored, dinked ashore, used the free public WiFi, talked with them for a half hour and then had beers and french fries at a waterfront table. 

Then we checked out the 160 foot  megayacht, Georgia,

and took a five mile hike around the northeast end of Bermuda. Met nice folks, ducks and cows, and toured forts and a  development.  And in the process we  developed a hunger for dinner, consumed at Wahoo Grill, another waterside table. Our first and only meal ashore in Bermuda (ice cream, french fries and drinks are not meals).  After dinner, the others took in some more WiFi but I had no battery left in my phone so wandered off to talk with some folks tied dockside in their 64 foot Swan. They spend their winters in the Caribbean and summers in Newport. The lady of the boat, Norma, originally from Long Island, has been to the Harlem YC with a friend and remembered it fondly. I invited her to an Old Salts session in July.  Here are some of the sights during our walk.

This church did not burn; it was just never finished.

Bougainvillea

See the man in the kayak?

The Three Musketeers.

Condo under construction

Wee family on a 30 foot wide beach

Yves feeding green grass to cows

Same name as my granddaughter

We ride in the dink with the air pump; when things get too squishy due to tiny remaining leaks, we just pump her up a bit . Yves plans to replace her this year. Our last night in Bermuda was peaceful like the others.