Just last week a new rally in conjunction with Bermuda Tourism was announced, as both a fundraiser for the SPIRIT OF BERMUDA tallship, and as a way to get boats offshore who were otherwise supposed to have raced in the A2B (like us), or the Newport to Bermuda Race. This is good news.

We have committed to join the event with both ICEBEAR & ISBJORN, IF we can get enough crew to fill both boats.

*As of Monday June 15, we are FULLY CREWED for both boats! Signup below to get on the waitlist.

This will be a paid-for passage, so if you have deposits with us from the postponed 2020 passages, it'll count towards this unless you want to keep the future passage, in which case we’ll issue a new invoice.

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Here's how it'll go, and how were managing the corona risk:

SPIRIT OF BERMUDA RALLY // START JULY 6

Provisional dates for crew: July 3/4 thru July 20 (Rally Start July 6)
The event will be scored as a 'race', but it'll be more fun and less competitive.
The 'race' will be in two legs - out to Bermuda, then a brief (1-2 day) stopover on-island - then the race back.
Crew will rendezvous in Annapolis on about July 3/4 (date TBD). We'd greatly prefer you DRIVE to Annapolis to avoid corona risk, and we may require this. You can leave your car there as it's out-and-back.
Crew must commit to the full out-and-back passage - this because there are still no flights in/out of Bermuda, and furthermore to mitigate the corona risk. This is about a 14-16 day commitment in total.
The passage from Annapolis is ~750 miles - so that's 1,500 miles of total sailing, about 8-11 days offshore in total, with a brief stop in St. Georges.
There is a chance we get delayed on either end due to tropical weather, so keep this in mind when planning.
Since this is run in part by Bermuda Tourism, they are indeed letting us go ashore in St. Georges, though there will certainly be restrictions.
There is a chance, if things change, that this will have to be an out-and-back nonstop passage, so be prepared to be flexible!
We're pricing this like any other trip, based on the estimated days offshore - the rate will be $4,500 per person.

If you want to sail, please go to 59-north.com/signup and register there. If you have sailed with us before, you can complete the shorter ‘former crew’ form on the same page.

CREW ALLOCATION

Though this is a 'race', we're treating it like a cruise due to the stopover and the accommodations on the boat. So ICEBEAR will be taking 6 paying crew, ISBJORN 4. Here's how we are prioritizing crew requests:

A2B Race Crew get first dibs (note: There is no 'formal' A2B in 2021, but we are already in talks with PRIDE OF BALTIMORE II and EYC to organize an informal race instead - so A2B WILL happen in some form in 2021, and on celestial - at the very least it'll be a good shakedown for OGR 2023!).
Any other crew signed onto one of the postponed Bermuda passages is second up.
Any crew paid for ANY future passages is next.
Then, if any spots are still open, we'll open it to the public on the website. *As of today, we have 4 spots left for ISBJORN.

If we can't fill both boats, we may just take one, but we wanted to throw it out there and see what ya'll think!

Hope we can all make this happen together!

In the meantime, track the boats as they head NORTH! 59-north.com/track

HOLD FAST!

// Andy

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