This past June, as I was getting ready for my own first go at the race, I couldn’t help wondering if I really belonged there. My ride to Bermuda was a fairly ordinary one—a vintage J/37 performance cruiser named Sleijride that paled in comparison to the various grand-prix offshore racers around us in the harbor—and our crew was an equally humble one, with only limited racing experience: worlds apart from the pro crews and rock stars aboard boats like the mini-maxis Bella Mente and Shockwave.
Still, a funny thing happened on the way to Bermuda.