NOTE TO READERS: Former Clay County, Fla., school board member Wayne

Wayne Bolla is in the middle of a cruise aboard his boat, Pipe Dream, to the Mediterranean Sea. He is writing a series of articles for the Wandering Tourist web site.

Bolla is on a sailing trip to the Mediterranean Sea, along with a couple of friends. He will chronicle his adventures in an occasional article on this web site. This is the second part of his stopover in Bermuda.

By WAYNE BOLLA

While on the island of Bermuda, we either walked or used the bus to get around on land. For about $10 Bermuda you can get a weekly bus ticket from the local internet cafe. The bus is also a great way to get a feel for how the regular folks live on the island. You get the feeling that everything is neat and buttoned down in Bermuda. I did a double take when I noticed a well-dressed, older gentlemen walking toward me on the sidewalk. He was dressed in a blue, buttoned-down dress shirt, blue blazer, reddish school tie and whitish Bermuda shorts, with knee-high blue socks and black dress loafers. I noticed

similar combinations in other parts of the island. I was ready to buy a pair of the shorts and some knee socks but then pictured myself in my old Boy Scout summer uniform . . . in public!

The quest for refrigeration parts, and a new VHF antennas took us to Hamilton, the capital city of Bermuda. It was about a 20-minute bus ride from St. Georges, accessible by boat from St Georges, but only through a fairly complicated series of channel passages best left to the locals.  Getting off the bus we navigated our way to the Bermuda Chamber of Commerce to find out where the best boat store in town was located. I was greeted by a most knowledgeable and friendly woman who bent over backwards to recommend the best of the two possible boat stores on the island, a place for lunch, and a couple of don’t miss sights along our walking route. After marking all the recommendations on the map of beautiful downtown Hamilton she gave us, we were off and running. I asked a ‘chap’ with a distinct British accent at the boat store if I should buy a Bermuda courtesy flag. These are small flags flown from the starboard yardarm (right side midway up the mast) that prove you were courteous enough to at least get through customs.

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Wayne Bolla is in the middle of a cruise aboard his boat, Pipe Dream, to the Mediterranean Sea. He is writing a series of articles for the Wandering Tourist web site.

NOTE TO READERS: Former Clay County, Fla., school board member Wayne Bolla is on a sailing trip to the Mediterranean Sea, along with a couple of friends. He will chronicle his adventures in an occasional article on this web site.

By WAYNE BOLLA

Some of my favorite sailing stories can be found in the Horatio Hornblower series by C.S. Forester. Most of the yarns are set during the Napoleonic Wars between 1800 and 1815. Forester does a great job researching history, sailing lore, and geography. Visiting some of the places he writes about is not a bad way to plan a present-day sailing adventure. England, however, is tough to get to on a sailing boat.  There is only about a two-month weather window for what I consider recreational sailing, and unless you are sailing to test your storm gear or the toughness of your crew, it is not the best of cruising grounds. The next best thing to sailing to England might be Bermuda.  It is only about 650 miles off the U.S. coast, they speak English there, and thanks to the gulfstream, it is warm most of the time.

The 20 square miles of the Bermuda islands was the first leg of our 4,000-mile cruise to the Mediterranean. It was discovered in 1503, settled around 1612 and is the oldest overseas British territory. In fact, it was a strategic naval base during much of Britain’s colonization of the Americas.  Spain had already become well established in much of the southern Americas and Britain made the strategic decision to focus on the northern parts of the Americas. Besides, it was all that was left as Spain had gotten there first and decided it was inhabited by devils – likely the call of a native blue jay type bird. Bermuda was an ideal base for northern points in the new world. The only drawback being it’s small size and relatively low land mass profile, which made it a feat of 1700’s navigational technology to find.

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