Bermuda & the Royal Naval Dockyard

A Mid-Atlantic Stop With Its Own Gravity

Bermuda sits alone in the western Atlantic, roughly 640 nautical miles east of New York and 636 nautical miles southeast of Newport, Rhode Island, so it is never a detour on the way to somewhere else. The island is the destination.

Two established ocean races confirm the routing every year they run. The Newport Bermuda Race, sailed in even years, covers 636 nautical miles from Fort Adams to a finish off St David's Lighthouse, with the 2026 fleet of more than 150 boats starting on 19 June and the fastest boats arriving inside three days. The Marion Bermuda Race, sailed in odd years from Marion, Massachusetts, covers 645 nautical miles to the same finish off St David's Head. Between the two, a fully raced or comfortably cruised Atlantic crossing lands at Bermuda almost every summer, not once every four years. The passage itself is the real qualifying test. Both races cross the Gulf Stream, a band of warm, fast moving water that can turn a benign forecast rough within hours, and most cruising boats budget two to four days for the crossing depending on route and weather. There is no fallback anchorage partway. An owner commits to open ocean the moment Newport or New York drops astern.

Getting There By Air

L.F. Wade International Airport, code BDA, is Bermuda's only airport and handles both commercial and private traffic on a single runway. Its distance from the mainland means general aviation is effectively limited to jets and long range turboprops, since the airport's own operators state plainly that shorter legged aircraft cannot safely make the crossing.

Atlantic Aviation runs the FBO with concierge, catering and VIP lounge services, and Skyport provides hangarage; SOL Petroleum supplies fuel on the field, and it is jet fuel only. Commercial service connects Bermuda directly to the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom on seven carriers, Air Canada, American, British Airways, United, Delta, JetBlue and WestJet, so crew changes and guest transfers rarely need a connection through a third airport.

A 636 nautical mile crossing of open Atlantic is the price of admission, and Bermuda has been worth paying it since well before the America's Cup arrived in 2017.

Arriving By Sea: St George's and the Clearance Process

Every yacht entering Bermuda by sea must clear in at St George's Harbour, the island's only port of entry, and the process starts well before the anchor goes down.

Boats are required to file through the SailClear online system ahead of arrival and to hail Bermuda Radio by VHF channel 16, or on the station's round the clock watch on 2182kHz and 4125kHz, from as far out as 30 nautical miles. Bermuda Radio then talks the yacht in and assigns a berth at the customs reporting dock. A single Customs boarding officer typically clears immigration, customs and health together, a minimum formality process for a private yacht arriving from overseas. Stays of less than five days need only a Transit Permit; anything longer requires a Cruising Permit, valid up to six months. Reported clearance charges have moved over time, from a flat USD 35 per person historically to a total closer to USD 140 for a four person sailing yacht on more recent reporting, so an owner should confirm the current figure with Bermuda Customs or an agent before arrival rather than budget against either number blind. St George's is not a bare customs shed. The town has been Bermuda's port of entry since its founding in 1612, making it among the oldest continuously settled English speaking towns in the Americas, and UNESCO listed the town together with its fortifications as a World Heritage Site in 2000. A yacht clearing in here ties up within walking distance of Ordnance Island and the old town's narrow lanes, not an industrial terminal.

The Royal Naval Dockyard, Then and After the America's Cup

The Royal Naval Dockyard on Ireland Island was built as a Royal Navy base through the 19th century, and its King's Wharf, completed in the 1850s to give warships a protected basin for repair, is now Bermuda's main deep water berth.

Heritage Wharf was added alongside it in 2009 specifically so two large ships could dock back to back, a scale built for cruise liners that also serves the yacht traffic sharing the same basin. The Dockyard's most significant recent upgrade came from hosting the 2017 America's Cup: Bermuda spent an estimated USD 77 million on the event, including about USD 25 million on permanent infrastructure such as an event village built on nine acres of reclaimed land in the Dockyard's south basin, plus new moorage built specifically for the visiting fleet. The Cup's own superyacht programme had 26 yachts booked into Dockyard alone that year, with a further nine on Front Street and 15 at the Hamilton Princess, and the berths, power and water laid on for that fleet remain in everyday commercial use. The Dockyard today also holds the National Museum of Bermuda, built into the Keep's former storehouses and fortifications, with Commissioner's House, the restored residence of the dockyard's commissioners, as its centerpiece. It is a working stop with real depth alongside it, not a preserved ruin, since cruise ships, day charter boats and visiting yachts all still use the same basin the Georgian and Victorian navy built.

Hamilton Harbour and Bermuda's Sailing Calendar

Hamilton Harbour, on the other side of the island from the Dockyard, is Bermuda's capital port and the base of the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, founded in 1844 and one of the oldest yacht clubs in the western hemisphere.

RBYC's own dock takes yachts up to about 150 feet alongside its concrete breakwaters, with shore power, water and full crew facilities, and it hosts the King Edward VII Gold Cup, the oldest match racing trophy in the world for one design yachts, dating to 1907 and sailed close inshore in International One Designs. The 2026 edition runs 14 to 18 October at RBYC, following the 2025 edition's 21 to 26 October dates, both drawing fields from the World Match Racing Tour for a USD 100,000 purse. Evening dinghy and keelboat racing is also a weekly fixture on the harbour through the season, visible from the RBYC lawn and from the Hamilton waterfront itself. Beyond the two ocean races that finish here, this gives Bermuda its own home grown racing scene rather than a calendar borrowed from somewhere else, and an owner timing a visit around the Gold Cup gets both the match racing and the tail end of the island's better cruising weather in the same week.

Hurricane Season and When To Actually Go

Bermuda's hurricane season runs the same calendar as the wider Atlantic, June through November, but the island's real exposure is smaller than its reputation suggests and the numbers say so specifically.

The island is a small target, about 21 square miles, and the Bermuda Weather Service puts a seriously damaging storm at roughly once every six to seven years even though an average of one named storm passes within 180 nautical miles every season. When a direct hit does land it is not academic. Hurricane Fabian struck on 5 September 2003 with sustained winds near 120mph, causing the island's first hurricane fatalities in 77 years, four deaths, and about USD 300 million in damage. Hurricane Gonzalo followed on 17 October 2014, also a direct hit, with sustained winds over 100mph and roughly USD 400 million in damage, though without a reported fatality that time. Both storms fell inside the August to October window that is also, statistically, the peak of the season. The practical answer for a cruising owner is to treat May, June and the first half of July as the reliable window, which is exactly when both ocean races run, and to watch the tropics closely for anything scheduled from mid-August through October, statistically the year's highest-risk stretch on the island. The Gold Cup's October date sits inside that same window, so an owner sailing for it should watch the forecast the way a hurricane-season cruiser would, not assume the racing calendar has already cleared the risk.

What Bermuda Actually Costs

Bermuda's costs are not a rumor. The 2026 Global Cost of Living Index ranked it the single most expensive place to live in the world, with prices running about 23.5 percent above New York City, and that premium lands on a visiting yacht as hard as it lands on a resident.

Marina pricing that is actually published bears this out. The Royal Bermuda Yacht Club in Hamilton charges USD 4.00 a foot a day from April through October and USD 3.00 a foot a day from November through March, with a 10 percent discount past 30 days, for a berth on its outer wall. St George's Marina prices by length band, USD 2.85 a foot a night up to 78 feet and USD 3.75 a foot a night above that. Public Bermuda Maritime Authority moorings run an estimated USD 300 to USD 1,000 a year and private slips USD 2,500 to USD 8,000 a year depending on length and location, with Hamilton Harbour commanding the premium end and Sandys and St George's running cheaper; seasonal yard storage ashore runs USD 30 to USD 80 a foot for the December to April lay-up window. Provisioning is where the reputation is most deserved. Groceries in Hamilton run about 25 percent above New York, the second highest grocery cost of any city measured worldwide after Zurich, and restaurant prices run roughly 50 percent above New York, the widest gap the same survey recorded anywhere. Fuel is a separate problem entirely: no Bermuda-specific pump price for marine diesel is published anywhere Yotters could verify, global fuel price trackers list Bermuda with a placeholder rather than a figure, and an owner should treat any fuel budget for the island as an estimate to confirm dockside, not a number to plan a passage against.

Who it is for: An owner who wants a genuine mid-ocean destination rather than a coastal hop, who can absorb Bermuda's prices and plan the crossing around hurricane season, and who wants a port with real naval and racing history rather than a marina built for the purpose.