Berth To Bermuda

“Both a grand entertainment and an invaluable resource for aficionados of the sport of ocean racing.”

The 635-mile Newport Bermuda Race is so historic and glamorous that every sailor’s ears perk up when it’s mentioned, so difficult that participants often ask, “Why am I out here?”, and so addictive that sailors (often in family crews) keep coming back in boats of all kinds – cruisers, classics, and Grand Prix racers.

When “the thrash to the Onion Patch” was first sailed amid loud controversy in 1906, the race created the sport of ocean racing. Since then, some 45,000 men and women have raced over (and often through) almost 3 million of blue water to Bermuda. In the centennial history, John Rousmaniere, author of the classic Fastnet, Force 10, After the Storm, In a Class by Herself, and other sailing books (and an eight-race Bermuda veteran), explains the addiction in an exciting, authoritative text and beautiful photographs. He takes the reader on board dozens of boats to experience the quirks, miseries, and joys of racing through the ocean to Bermuda.

Carleton Mitchell and Finisterre set one of the immortal records in sports
Heroic Bobby Somerset saves ten sailors from a burning schooner
The Gulf Stream – violent, perverse, only recently understood
How to win a Bermuda Race, by the masters
The Cruising Club of America and Royal Bermuda Yacht Club take painstaking efforts to make the race both fair and safe.
And, of course, there is beautiful, hospitable, historic Bermuda – of which one race organizer said, “It is Bermuda itself that is the chief factor in the success of the race.”