Emily Shakes Up Bermuda With Wind and Rain

After my last trip to the “Vexed Bermooths,” as William Shakespeare called the islands, Bermuda Triangle stories have a new meaning for me.

I’m doing some thinking about tales of ships and planes mysteriously disappearing in the area between Bermuda and Cape Hatteras.

How else do I explain why I, a veteran traveler, would mistake Metamucil for Woolite and use it for my laundry?

Or leave behind three pounds of frozen cassava root defrosting in the hotel refrigerator?

Or on the morning of my flight out one day last September, be awakened by Hurricane Emily? Three coincidences, my hat! It’s, well, peculiar, if not supernatural.

There were no warnings. I didn’t realize that I’d switched to a new soap powder until I tried to put on a clean shirt and found the back and front stuck together.

Hotel Chef Puzzled

Same with the cassava root. I bought it my first day to take home and make famous Bermuda cassava pie. It may still be puzzling the hotel chef every time he opens the refrigerator door.

Same for the hurricane. The famous weather stone at Ft. Scaur cast a shadow, the sign of sunshine, when I took a picture. If the stone is wet, it’s raining, and if it’s swaying to and fro, the wind’s blowing, the sign next to it says.

The island was pink and white as usual every day for a week. Sun shines here 361 days a year. Water is turquoise, turning to deep blue and navy. Roofs make you snow-blind without sunglasses. Bermudians paint them white as catch basins for rainwater.

They need the water on this fishhook-shaped string of islands because there are no streams and not enough wells.

Desalinization plants are expensive, but the island can afford them. With 100% employment, no income tax, no sales tax, no slums and no poverty, it has an enviable economy. The word smug occasionally comes to mind, but complacent is probably a more accurate description of the average citizen.

Two days before Hurricane Emily, mopeds scooted from St. David’s Lighthouse at one end to Ireland Island at the other in 90 minutes. In some places the land is so narrow that the ocean borders the road on both sides.

Most tourists rode mopeds. Also some islanders. Men dressed in suits with Bermuda shorts and high socks carry attache cases and safety helmets that make their heads look like space cadets. At night they drive to restaurants with their ladies, some of whom wear long gowns. And all wear the safety helmets.

St. George’s, the original capital, is done up cutesy with stocks and a ducking stool in the square and a town crier in full costume.

Nearby is a replica of the Deliverance. Survivors of the sinking of the Sea Venture built it after ragged fringe reefs around the island caught their ship. The Deliverance took them on to Jamestown, Va.

When the colonists got to Jamestown the town was down to a few sick and starving stragglers. The Deliverance beat it back to Bermuda for good.

In Concrete Foundation

After Emily, the Deliverance looked more like the Sea Venture on the rocks on July 18, 1609. With its main mast resting on the deck, the ship seemed to be listing in its concrete foundation.

It was cloudy the day before Emily hit, but Bermudians smile when it rains. I found the three pounds of frozen cassava. The hotel desk clerk wrote my name on the package and put it in the refrigerator to defrost.

Cruise ships towered over Hamilton’s fashionable Front Street, giving the odd illusion that they were permanent and the island’s capital city had sailed in and tied up to the big ships.

Trimingham’s and the Irish Linen Shop didn’t consider boarding up windows.

“Emily Should Brush the Island Today,” headlines in early editions of the Royal Gazette proclaimed, even as 80-m.p.h. gusts of wind grabbed the paper off porches and shredded it. Rattling windows woke me at 7 a.m. Branches and broken tiles lay on the roof.

I dressed in three minutes. It took another minute to get the door to my room open. Strong winds create big changes in air pressure. As I stepped into the hall, a window at the end of the hall crashed in. Curtains held most of the glass, but not the rain.

“Don’t take the elevator,” warned a composed hotel maid as she cleaned up the mess.

She set the tone for the rest of the day, though I didn’t realize it then. The radio voice was calm. Everyone was matter-of-fact.

Huddled Behind the Door

At the bottom of the stairwell a group of guests huddled behind the door watching gusts of wind push rain through broken windows in the lobby and bar.

Out beyond in the tennis courts I could see a man in a bright yellow slicker walk head down into the wind, assessing damages, checking the emergency generators. That was comforting.

Breakfast as usual in the dining room, buffet tables full as ever. Storm strategy gives eating top priority. There isn’t much else to do, and if the electricity goes out the food will spoil. So a lot of us put away a full meal as the sky grew lighter and the wind died down.

Between huffs and puffs, Emily reluctantly departed. I wandered out to take pictures of the damage. Big trees were down, roots clawing the air.

The soil, only inches deep on parts of the island, covers Bermuda coral, an Aeolian limestone so soft that it was cut out by hand in blocks and hardened in the air to become walls of houses later painted cerulean blue, salmon pink, even lavender.

Tornado warnings follow storms like this. We were rounded up and herded into the Belmont’s dining room, windows safely taped, for a multiple-salad lunch. No lives were lost, the manager reported, and no injuries either.

An hour later bright sunshine signaled that it was all clear. It took the first taxi at the hotel’s door an hour to drive from Hamilton, 10 minutes away.

At one hotel in Hamilton an elevator came crashing down its well from the sixth to the first floor. It was forced down by the wind. Luckily no one was in it at the time. A cruise ship left the pier in time to anchor in the middle of the harbor and rode out Emily. Its partner, however, was torn from its mooring and pushed dangerously into deeper water.

Afterward, electricity was out in most shops in Hamilton. Women buying products enjoyed an hour of light but then the lights went off as receipts were being written. Their husbands saved money.

We crept around the islands, waiting as crews cheerfully pulled trees out of the road, watching as Bermudians patched holes in their white roofs with blue and green tarp.

Boats high and dry lined beaches and small harbors, but strangely, the boats in Hamilton Harbor all safely rode out the storm and thumbed their noses at Emily. At one stop a tree next to a car creaked, shuddered and fell--the other way.

Crews untangled wires dangling from telephone poles, smiling. Neighbors helped neighbors. Cars moved slowly past a corner house as people gawked at a V indented in its upstairs porch by a fallen tree.

Boards already covered broken store windows on Front Street, but the supermarket was open for business. Two Rastafarians ambled up Queen Street. On Burnaby Street, a person wandered along talking to himself.

Business as Usual

Restaurants with electric power opened for business as usual by 6 p.m., some shops were open by noon and discos along Front Street were packed by 8 p.m. Customers may have been dancing in relief, but it sounded just like any other night.

Cabs packed in the customers and promised to come back for more. You can’t rent cars, only mopeds. Anyone with a moped carried a rider behind. But the sky was full of stars, the night warm and dry again.

By the next day the airport had a temporary roof and was back in business.

A 71-year-old taxi driver, born on the island, said he had never seen a hurricane hit Bermuda. They always just brushed by. It was a surprise to him, too.

In Somerset, tourists examined the world’s smallest drawbridge and snapped pictures of each other in front of Neptune in the keep of the Maritime Museum.

Although he looks like a hand-me-down from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, Neptune came off the old battleship Irresistible.

Less than 24 hours after Emily blew in, the island, with Band-Aids over its cuts and bruises, was back in business.

Change that complacent to pragmatic when describing Bermudians. And add cheerful.

Without a thought for the pie, I left the cassava behind. I never do that. I didn’t connect everything with that triangle stuff until the 5.9 earthquake rattled Santa Monica a couple of days later.

That’s when it dawned on me: Make the legs of the Bermuda Triangle a little wider and all of California is part of the eerie Bermuda Triangle. The whole country!

Now I’m very careful. The soap powder is labeled and locked up. I’m looking for dried cassava at specialty food stores. I have a chat with the weather person every day and I know the list of earthquake tips by heart.

Although Delta, Eastern, American and Air Canada fly into Bermuda, Pan Am offers the best connections from Los Angeles with a daylight flight to New York, where passengers catch another Pan Am flight to the islands.

Depending on the season and special packages, the round-trip flight costs $600 to $800.

Proof of citizenship is required by Bermuda immigration. Bring a birth certificate or passport. Cruises also stop here; most originate in New York.

Bermuda’s dollar has been pegged to the American dollar and either is acceptable in island shops and restaurants.

Some hotels offer American plan packages, which means meals included.

Dinner in some of the best places comes to $50 per person, not including drinks. But at good small places such as the Italian Trattoria in Hamilton, a meal can cost as little as $25 for two. Usually the tip is included on the check.

Henry VIII in Southampton is popular because it has both dinner and entertainment. Dinner and an evening might run $75 to $100 a person. Other equally good eating places are Romanoffs (most expensive on the island and the most elegant--about $200 for two persons, including wine and tip), Once Upon a Table, Tom Moore’s Tavern, Fisherman’s Reef, Waterlot Inn, The Penthouse and the new Bombay Bicycle Club.

Accommodations, Air Fare

Accommodations range from guest houses, such as Little Pomander in Paget, to the Pretty Penny close to South Shore beaches. These are frequently available in packages that include air fare.

In the low season (November through March) rates drop to $59 per person double at the Belmont, for example, and golf packages are available.

Other possibilities are the Inverurie Hotel, the Princess, Southampton Princess, Marriott’s Castle Harbour Resort, Elbow Beach Hotel. Smaller places are the Glencoe, Pompano Beach Club, the Reefs.

There are also housekeeping apartments and cottages.

Taxi service is fast and economical; frequent ferry service connects most hotels to Hamilton.

Bermuda has no sales tax. Prices marked on articles are exactly what you pay.

For additional information, contact the Bermuda Department of Tourism, 310 Madison Ave., New York 10017, phone (212) 818-9800.