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I went aboard at Annapolis the day after the Volvo racers set forth for Europe and the completion of their quest.

The place had the air of a fairground the day after the carnival has moved on to some other town, both fulfilled and depressed at once. The mirage of grandeur passes on like the dew from the grass on a Monday morning.

We took a group of students sailing. They were victors in a state-wide contest based on our Maryland With Pride curriculum. Afterward I strolled up to Church Circle past the puffs of subsiding tents and awnings. Like Cinderella after midnight, the parking lot was reverting to a parking lot after a taste of international celebrity. The soles of real cosmopolitans lately strode this asphalt. The parking meters resumed their authority like brownshirts at the end of a rally.

When we sailed away the next day, Annapolis was its old self again. I am sure the multitude of people who strove to make the Volvo Cup a success slept the sleep of the just in the aftermath of a monumental job well done. The dome of the Naval Academy was the last view we took with us down the Bay, out onto the North Atlantic, and into another season for the Pride of Baltimore II.

Before poking our nose into deep water, we paused at Solomons Island on the Patuxent River to top off on fresh produce and check the mirror, so to speak. King Neptune looks unfavorably on a schooner who smiles with spinach in her teeth, no matter how shapely her transom. The Solomons Island Yacht Club warmly hosted the Pride II and we opened to the public. Buck McClellan, the dockmaster, took the Cook shopping and transported our laundry and generally helped us over and over again. When the tornado watch announcement came over the radio at four o'clock on Thursday afternoon, not a week after La Plata, Maryland was taken to the mat by twin twisters, we took it pretty seriously.

We lowered the foresail to the deck, trebled the docklines, shut the watertight doors and waited. We had some lightning and a 30 knot puff but whatever synchronicity of circumstances that precursed the tornadoes that hit Charles County on a different day was not to be repeated so soon. By dark I stood the crew down and they ventured out to taste the pleasures of the harbor, including a visit to the world famous Tiki Bar at Solomons. After a round of drinks the color of a swimming pool, they headed back to the safety of the ship. On Friday the crew joined in the fray at "burger night" and a small crowd gathered on the dock to see us off the next morning.

Pride II proceeded down the Bay to the vicinity of Cape Charles where we anchored for a night. It was blowing Northeast around 20 knots with some rain. Normally when heading to Bermuda this is the sort of wind one burns offerings and slaughters lambs for. But we had an untested crew, a bunch of guest crew, and we would have reached open water in pitch black. There is no moon at the moment. People would have made mistakes and they would not have been caught till morning. A gale system was pushing off the coast to the south of us that very night and bringing us the fair, if somewhat snotty wind. I chose to hold up and make sure that the gale was indeed going to go where the experts said it was heading, and let the folks aboard get a bit more oriented.

On Sunday we made our move. It was still blowing Northeast but the rain had moved through and the gale was fulfilling its prophecy by moving east and away. Pride II slipped out behind it and sailed a rhumbline for Bermuda.

The next day the Gulf Stream lumped up and people started puking. King Neptune was exacting tribute. If I were king of the watery deep I feel certain I could conceive of a tribute more delicate and satisfying than chunks of regurgitated food, but to each his own.

Before long the wind hauled into the southwest and Pride II began to stretch her legs like an athlete in a new season. She rollicked along at eight or nine, sometimes ten or eleven knots and racked up her first 220 mile day of the '02 season. She loved it. She was a foal on foam, her rigging taut and flexing like tendons as she shouldered through the seas. She conveyed us saint-like across the deep in the hollow of her hull. The ocean riffled past her planks and the pitch in her decks warmed to a more southern latitude. Our constellations are changing now as well. A stunning Scorpio now reclines across the southern sky in the wee hours. We may yet spy the Southern Cross as we foray south. By day the ocean acquires a pure cobalt hue. We are off the Continental Shelf now, beyond the run-off, beyond the shallows and the nutrients that make the coast so life-giving. Out here the sun's rays penetrate down into the deep with the same heavenly thrust with which they pierce the clouds above.

The sail to Bermuda was a cakewalk. This is more rare than one might think. This was my ninth trip to Bermuda and it was the first time coming from the mainland that I didn't get my butt kicked. On previous occasions I was pushing the seasons more. It was usually early November or early April. Gales were part of the recipe and they always found us. I recall an Easter Sunday in 1984 hove-to in 60 knots of wind. It was bitter cold on deck so we plugged up all the ventilation and the entire ship smelled like the inner sanctum of a ripe laundry hamper, the heart of darkness, an olfactory hell on earth. On another occasion we had to rescue the same yacht twice. Some folks never learn. The trip to Bermuda is always interesting but just this once it was a cakewalk and I am not complaining.

Bermuda Harbor Radio greeted us as the day drew down on our patch of Atlantic. There is no night navigation in Bermuda except for emergencies. Rightly so, they are very concerned with fuel spillage. There is a long history of shipwreck here. In fact that is how the British came here in the first place. A vessel bound for Jamestown, Virginia, with supplies piled up on the reef. Two smaller ships were built from the wreckage and the venture went on to save the Jamestown colonists from imminent starvation.

By the time Bermuda hove into sight, dusk was falling so we were committed to another night at sea. No matter. It was a lovely night to sail slowly past the island. Light winds and slight seas prevailed. From time to time the avuncular tones of Bermuda Harbor Radio came across the airwaves, always calm and reassuring. As the history of marine radio goes, Bermuda must have one of the richest. There is nothing that the boys at BHR have not seen or dealt with: hurricane, shipwreck, salvage, war, you name it. So on they go, this great, warm, booming voice talking through the night out into the black Atlantic as we drift around with the other vessels that await the dawn.

An hour before first light, the Bosun woke me. The engines were fired up and we headed for the channel and the pilot rendezvous.

The channel into St. Georges Harbor is cut through living rock and feels uncomfortably narrow. But the fact is, it is plenty big enough. Evidence of this is seen when cruise ships the size of an apartment building pass through on a routine basis. The cut was made between the wars for a submarine base that saw a great deal of service during World War II. The United States military set up shop here during the war as part of the lend-lease agreement with Britain. We gave them a pile of destroyers and they gave us bases throughout the western Atlantic.

Historically Bermuda must have been one of the most heavily fortified places anywhere. The island is studded with forts going back to the 1600's and right up through World War II.

The British invasion fleet that burnt Washington and bombarded Baltimore in 1814 sailed from Bermuda. The largest drydock in the world at one time was here. Confederate blockade runners sailed from here during the Civil War with the cooperation of the British. The same British who so nobly devoted resources to extinguishing the slave trade from Africa aided and abetted the Confederacy every step of the way during the Civil War because their textile industry needed cheap cotton. Once they were able to get cheap cotton from India, well, things changed.

The sail training ship Corwith Cramer is in port at the moment with many old shipmates, including several former Pride II crew, so this has been a pleasant reunion. Our crew is busily tending to the rig, varnishing and generally taking care of the ship, though I am hoping that each person will be able to get a day to look around the island. We are scheduled to sail on Tuesday, May 14th. Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

Watch Below,

Captain Daniel Parrott