We arrived on Bermuda in the afternoon of Tuesday, October 13th and were picked up at the airport by Melvin (Butch) Outerbridge, the former fire chief turned taxi driver. Melvin chatted with us about all the changes that had occurred since our trip to Bermuda over sixteen years earlier as newlyweds. He drove us the fifteen minutes to our efficiency apartment in the home of Wayne Furbert, a Bermudian Parliament member with an understated charm and easy way with words that belied his success as a politician. He took us to the local market and showed us around his estate overlooking Harrington Sound, the site of the race five days hence. He was clearly proud of his country and was an absolute pleasure to be around, although we rarely saw him due to his busy schedule. Wayne also has a specialty coffee business and he showed us the ropes of the one-cup-at-a-time machine and gave us packets of coffees from Sumatra, Costa Rica, and British “Breakfast Blend”.  The coffee was just one bonus from Wayne’s hospitality as he also had kayaks, a beautiful pool overlooking the Sound, and checked in on us every other day to see if we needed anything

Our host Wayne Furbert .

You can see Harrington Sound with Trunk Island just offshore in the picture above. Here is a video of the Sound from the Estate:

After we got over the sticker shock at the local grocery store, (bread $6, sixpack of beer $11, cereal $6, small bag of apples $6, and half gallon of milk $4, small jar of salsa $6, bag of blue tortilla chips $8) we settled in and planned out the next day’s excursion. I remember looking out at Harrington Sound, thinking, it seemed bigger than I had imagined and I planned to swim out to Trunk Island the next day as it was just a few hundred meters from our humble abode. On Wednesday, the weather was sunny in spots and we laid out by the pool to get a bit of color on our Michigan white skin. We took an afternoon trip on the bus to Hamilton and had a nice meal of grilled rockfish with fried banana and almond topping at The Lobster Pot. Hamilton was just as busy as we remembered it from 1993, but more-so. There were new construction projects everywhere and the traffic was mind-boggling and put me off the idea of renting a scooter as we had on our previous trip (when we were childless and more able to stomach the risk).