A Sailors Tale

My sailor boys performing for a photo of a lifetime (Bermuda tourism board, if you want it, you know who to contact)

There’s a saying among sailors - plans are just ideas until the sea agrees. I had my plan: a simple flight to Cuba, a smooth arrival, and a seamless start to my next great adventure. The sea, however, had other ideas.

It began with a snowstorm, the kind that silences cities and swallows plans whole. Toronto disappeared under thick, unrelenting white, and my one-stop journey became a tangled mess of cancellations, reroutes, and unexpected layovers. I drifted through airports like flotsam caught in an uncharted current. One flight here, another there until, at last, the Caribbean sun kissed my face in Havana, melting away the frozen chaos I had left behind. The journey had tested me before it had even begun, but that only made arrival sweeter.

Havana was a world of its own, a city that breathed in rhythm, where history curled like cigar smoke through the streets. Music spilled from open doorways, the scent of salt and diesel mixed with aged rum and the tang of citrus. In the golden glow of afternoon, we traced cobblestone paths to a tucked-away rum tasting, where each sip carried notes of molasses and time. At the cigar shops, craftsmen rolled tobacco with the patience of those who had mastered an art passed down through generations. And in the quiet halls of the Alexander Von Humboldt Museum, we wandered past old maps and relics of exploration, echoes of sailors who had once looked toward the horizon as we were about to.

Then, the sea called, and we answered.

Leaving Cuba was a dream of wind and water. The Alex-2 surged forward with nearly every sail full, cutting through the waves with the effortless grace of a ship in her element. The deck hummed beneath my feet, the rigging groaned with tension, and for days, we danced with the ocean, our course dictated by nothing but the whims of the wind. This: this was sailing at its finest, where the ship becomes an extension of yourself, and the sea feels infinite.

But the Atlantic does not grant perfection for long.

The wind abandoned us off the Florida coast, leaving us stranded in the eerie stillness of the doldrums. The sails hung lifeless, the water so glassy it reflected the sky like a vast, empty mirror. In the distance, Miami flickered like an illusion, a world apart. We watched its neon glow shimmer on the horizon, knowing we couldn’t reach it, knowing we didn’t belong there. Time stretched in that unmoving world, the silence of the sea pressing in, until finally, the wind returned, and we sailed once more.

The stillness gave way to chaos. A rain spout twisted down from the heavens, carving a path of fury across the waves. The all-hands call rang through the ship like a heartbeat quickening before a sprint. The deck became a blur of motion - sails reefed, lines secured, bodies braced against the storm’s wrath. Rain lashed against bare skin, the ship groaning under nature’s sudden ferocity. And then, just as suddenly as it had come, the storm passed, leaving us breathless in its wake. A U.S. warship slid by in the distance, silent, indifferent, a steel monolith on its own unspoken mission. We had survived another test, another reminder that the sea does not give without taking.

For hours on end, I worked aloft in the rigging, fingers raw from rope work, muscles aching from the constant strain. Each knot tied, each sail trimmed, brought me closer to my goal - earning my Able-Bodied Seaman certification, my “Matrose.” The sea was my classroom, my trial, my proving ground.

And then, on the horizon: Bermuda.

Arriving felt surreal. The last time I had sailed into this harbour, I was a student, still learning, still uncertain. Now, I was crew. The pastel buildings of Hamilton stood like sentinels against the emerald hills, welcoming us back to solid ground. We tied off the lines with the satisfaction of a journey well-earned, the exhaustion in our bones tempered by the thrill of arrival.

But the land held adventures of its own. We tore through winding island roads on rented mopeds, the warm wind whipping past as we chased the setting sun. Every morning began with a sunrise swim, the cold shock of the water a perfect contrast to the fire of the past weeks at sea. The island was a paradise, but it wasn’t just the beauty that made it special - it was the knowledge that we had fought for this arrival, that we had carved our path here through wind and storm.

I couldn’t have asked for a better way to end the trip. But even as I stood on the shores of Bermuda, the sea was already whispering its next story, its next horizon waiting to be chased.

The adventure never truly ends. It only pauses, until the wind calls again.