Notable Times: Bermuda 2: A Birthday in Bermuda

June 12, 2023 was my birthday, and I got to spend it on the island of Bermuda!

After a day and a half at sea, we woke up early Monday morning, ate, and walked off the ship to meet the catamaran we had hired for a three hour tour ("...a three hour tour...").

The captain was a guy who had lived there all his life, and he told us all about his catamaran business as we zoomed along.

It was a very smooth, pleasant ride.

I liked that Jared and Katelyn had matching shirts for the day.

It was fun to get a good look at our ship from the water, now that we had gotten to know it.

There was a mesh platform out front that people could hang out on, just over the water.

There was also a railing at both tips of the catamaran where you could look over the waves as we cut through the water.

The water there was beautiful. The more shallow the water was, the lighter the color.

In the distance, we could see the blocky buildings, all of which are covered in plaster and painted in colorful but pale pastels.

These little buildings were built above the water to handle the tide and waves.

Bermuda is a British Overseas Territory, so they drive on the left and stuff. It was discovered in 1505 by the Spanish explorer Juan de Bermúdez, which is where the island gets its name. It has been inhabited ever since the English settled there in 1612. The population is now about 64,000 people.

Unlike The Bahamas, which are down by Florida, Bermuda is out in the Atlantic Ocean, 600 miles due east from North Carolina.

We kept joking about how "this cruise was cheap, because it was a one-way ticket" (due to the Bermuda Triangle making it so we wouldn't return). The Bermuda Triangle is a section of ocean in which many ships and airplanes have gone missing. This is all true--but proportionately no more so than any other area of the ocean. The supposed mystery was first proposed in 1950 and has been propagated and debunked numerous times. But it was still fun to joke about.

We passed near Daniel Island, where people used to think there were demons, due to the terrifying screeching sounds that came from there. Some people thought it sounded like hundreds of babies crying. It turns out that it was birds. Specifially, it was the Berumda patrel, also called a "cahow" due to its cry. These were believed to be extinct at one point, but were rediscovered and, due to diligent conservation efforts, are now making a comeback.

Near Daniel's Island is a shipwreck of the H.M.S. Vixen.

It was an armored gunboat built in 1865 for the Royal Navy. It used to have sails, in addition to a steam engine. After serving as a local defense, rescue boat, and even barracks, it was eventually scuttled to purposely block a channel through the reef so that ships would have to pass nearer to the defensive forts.

It has been lying here with its nose just out of the water since 1896.

So we jumped in and started snorkeling all around it!

I have a mediocre underwater camera and it captured a lot of coral, and quite a few fish.

Some of the structures of the ship are still visible underwater, including this ladder.

It seems like this may have been the port where the anchor chain went through. (Google says that is called a "hawespiper").

I think this is Sienna, exploring a hatchway on the surface of the ship.

The visibility in the water wasn't great that day, so I popped up above the surface occasionally to see where the ship was.

Sometimes we'd see a big bright blue fish and then realize it was someone's flippers.

Katelyn had a GoPro that took better pictures and video than mine.

Here is a 4-minute video that shows the coral and fish around the shipwreck. The quality gets better during the footage from Katelyn's GoPro. Towards the end, you see Erika swim down to take a peek inside the gaping hole in the deck of the ship. Luckily, no sharks nor giant squids in there. (I added a little Enya music to avoid having to listen to distorted underwater sounds from the bad microphones.)

I love snorkeling, so I loved kicking off my birthday in Bermuda by having us spend 45 minutes snorkeling a shipwreck surrounded by coral and fish.

We all survived, so that was great. (The guy said that in these shallow reefs, he's only seen a shark twice in 30 years).

You could tell that the suction on Jared's mask worked great.

The captain weighed anchor, and we set sail (with a motor).

Snorkeling a shipwreck was at the top of my list, so that was awesome!

Next, we cruised back around our ship and across the way to Admiral's Cave.

Here's a map of Bermuda. It is shaped like a fishhook. Our ship was at the Royal Dockyard at the northeastern tip of the "hook" shown as "Ship" in the middle of the left side. We went out to the "Shipwreck" at the upper left edge; and then back past our ship over to where it says "Cave" on the north shore, near the main city of Hamilton.

If you take a bus, you have to go all the way around, and it takes about two hours from the dockyard around to the far end in the upper right corner of the map. It's much faster by ferry or other boat.

Interestingly, Bermuda is only 2 miles wide at its widest point, so you're always within a 1 mile walk of one shore or the other.

So we got back onboard and the wind dried us off as we cruised along.

Soon we went past our ship as we headed around the bend to go towards the cave.

Near the ship, we saw some of the life boats out doing training. Every boat is tested once a year to make sure it is operational.

We also saw some parasailing going on.

Linette usually gets seasick on small boats, so she took some dramamine. It turned out that the sea was calm where we were, so she wished she hadn't bothered, but you have to take it 30 minutes before you need it, so there wasn't a good way to know. Warning: Dramamine may cause drowsiness.

Finally, we arrived at Admiral's Cave, which was carved and blasted into the rock to store gunpowder and such. It also has cliffs that are a good height for cliff jumping.

At first, I just swam over to the caves without a camera, hoping that Katelyn's GoPro would suffice. But when I saw how cool the caves looked, I went back and grabbed my iPhone, placed in Jared's waterproof pouch, and used it to get pictures and videos of people cliff jumping.

Here's a video showing full-speed and slow-motion versions of everyone's cliff jumping, both before and after we explored the caves. I was impressed by Erika's splits and Chase's toe touch during their jump. It ends with some slow motion rain drops as we got back on board the catamaran.

Here's everyone floating like they're dead after their first cliff jump.

From the water, it wasn't obvious that there was a cave there. (Also, gotta love the blue of the water!)

But as we got closer, the cave opened up.

From inside the cave, there was a hole that people could look up through.

With her feet together, Sienna looked kind of like a mermaid!

Here are Kelsi and Chase.

And here are Kyle and Erika.

Further into the cave, there is a window that looks out over the ocean.

This part of the tunnel ended in a dead end, and was probably used to store gunpowder and such.

Another tunnel had several openings to the outside along the way.

At the end of the tunnel was a rectangular doorway. I posed for a silhouette there, taken by some people from England I met there.

This looks like an island floating in a black sea. But really it's a window to the rock and water below.

There were stairs carved into the rock that led up to the surface.

Another set of stairs reached the surface a different way.

From on top, we had a nice view of the Catamaran.

Finally, everyone jumped back into the water and we swam back to the ship.

It started to rain as we returned to the ship, but we were already wet, so it didn't matter much. It did make us think that maybe that wasn't the best time to go find a beach, though.

On the way back, you could tell that Jared had been lying on the mesh platform.

Our original plan was to have the boat drop us off somewhere else, from which we would find a beach or something. But we were all a bit tired from these activities, so we just took the boat back to our ship, where we changed into dry clothes and ate some lunch.

When we returned to our room, we found that they had made a towel like a little crab.

We dropped off our snorkel gear and then headed to lunch.

Our lunch spot overlooked the big fort there. We decided that rather than find a beach, we would just walk over and check out the fort and its museum, so we wouldn't have to get wet again quite yet. We had one full day and part of another in Bermuda, so we weren't in a particular hurry.

After lunch, I grabbed another shake at Johnny Rockets. The gal there was starting to recognize me as a regular customer.

Meanwhile, Kyle and Chase decided to go golfing. Bermuda is known as one of the most beautiful places to golf in the world, and they had wanted to go, but heard horror stories about how much it would cost. But the catamaran captain told them how much it would really cost, and it wasn't that bad (except that they ended up having to each pay for a bag of clubs that cost more than the golfing).

The captain had also told us that the hands-down best place in Bermuda to get the traditional fish sandwich was at Woody's, just a short distance from the golf course, and not far from the ship.

So Kyle and Chase went and got the fish sandwich, and said that it was indeed incredible.

They thoroughly enjoyed their round of golf with gorgeous oceans all around.

We changed into dry clothes and then met down on Deck 1 to disembark again. We had to wait a few minutes for everyone to gather, and Linette was still feeling the effects of the Dramamine.

Soon we were all gathered and walked right next door to the fort, by way of this fun ring.

Inside the fort, we started in the "Ordinance House" that used to store 4,000 kegs of gunpowder in the 1800s.

Now it houses exhibits about the history of Bermuda and some of its shipwrecks. This is a model of the Sea Venture, a ship trying to supply the Jamestown Colony when it was caught in a hurricane. After battling for 3 days aboard a badly leaking ship, the captain spied land (Bermuda) and deliberately ran the ship aground a mile from shore to prevent sinking. The 150 people aboard (and one dog) were able to make it safely to shore. They were stranded on Bermuda for 9 month, and eventually built new ships and sailed on to Jamestown, where they found only 60 survivors of the original 500 there, and headed back to England.

This case shows some of the artifacts recovered from the original Sea Venture shipwreck.

One funny display said that in order to create a ready source of food for future castaways, "Spanish mariners intentionally left hogs on Bermuda--or dropped them overboard within swimming distance while sailing by." We all laughed at the image of throwing pigs overboard and hoping they could swim to shore.

(Jared also booped its snoot.)

Here's an imitation of the bottom of this painting.

Another building, the "Boat Loft", had little sailboats from various eras, including recent ones.

Upstairs I found a guy using a big handle to wind the clock by raising a large concrete weight into the air.

I thought my dad would appreciate this display made of a hundred different knots.

Next to that building was a tank where dolphins were trained. Linette and some others sat to watch some tourists interact with the dolphins.

Kelsi and Linette captured some video of their vicarious dolphin encounter.

Meanwhile, Sienna and I walked up the hill to check out the fort. Along the way, we visited the "High Cave", which had a little drippy pond as well as a building that had been used as a magazine (store of shells and explosives).

There was a small building there that had this hallway that looked like it ended in a dead-end.

However, when I went another way and looked at these cannon shells, I suddenly heard tapping at a glass window above them and found Sienna peeking in at me, which freaked me out. Apparently at the end of the hallway above, you can turn left and go behind the other walls of the building.

Next we explored the walls of the fort itself, which is the largest fort in Bermuda. It wasn't ever attacked, but that might have been because there was a fort there!

It kind of looked like this cannon was aimed at the Norwegian cruise ship. I bet it would win.

The jumble of anchors there was impressive.

These chain links reminded me of those assigned to Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol (which he "forged in life, link by link...").

The walls were in various shapes to make sure the cannons could fire in any direction.

I wondered how they handled the recoil of the cannons. I was imagining springs or something. Looks like they simply used gravity sometimes.

Next, Sienna and I explored the Commissioner's house. It was built in the 1820s and was used as the actual commissioner's house for a decade, and then for various things over the years. It was finally acquired by the Bermuda museum and restored to its current state by 2000. It now has several floors of exhibits. Fun fact--In 1919, the Commissioner’s House was formally commissioned as the "ship" HMS Malabar, which was its official designation until 1951. Apparently the British navy does that sometimes.

One room in the house was dedicated to the slave trade and the history of slavery in Bermuda. Slavery was finally abolished throughout the British empire in 1834.

The stairway had a two-story mural covering all four walls.

It was painted in three years from 2005-2007 on many panels that were then brought here and re-assembled. It tells the 500 years of Bermuda's history, as well as highlighting the plants and animals of the island.

Other displays in the building showed various cannons and shells. I learned that a "gun" fires horizontally to try to punch a hole in the side of a ship; a "mortar" fires high so that it can punch a hole in the top of a ship; and a "howitzer" is in between.