The Storm, the Stars, and the Sea: John Lennon’s Sailing Journey to Bermuda

In the summer of 1980, John Lennon, former Beatle, cultural icon, and self-described househusband, undertook a journey that would redefine the final chapter of his life. The trip was not to a studio, a stage, or even a peaceful countryside retreat. It was across 700 miles of open ocean, from Newport, Rhode Island, to the dreamy shores of Bermuda. It would be no ordinary voyage. Plotted by astrology, steered by instinct, and forged through physical hardship, this five-day maritime odyssey would become both a personal catharsis and creative awakening for a man who had not recorded an album in over five years.

Setting the Course: From Long Island to the Atlantic

Lennon had been living a quieter life with Yoko Ono and their son Sean at their waterfront home on Long Island, having retreated from the public eye since the mid-1970s. During this semi-retirement, he developed an interest in sailing. At a local boatyard, he bought a dinghy and met Tyler Coneys, a young sailor who became both instructor and friend. Together, they explored the basics of sailing. But Lennon, ever the romantic adventurer, wanted more.

With Yoko’s encouragement and a recent tarot reading pointing to a meaningful journey in a south-easterly direction, Lennon decided on Bermuda, a fitting destination lying exactly that way from Long Island. Lennon asked Coneys to arrange the voyage. Coneys chartered a 43-foot Hinckley sloop named Megan Jaye, based in Newport. At the helm would be Cap’n Hank Halsted, a seasoned skipper with a wild beard and the calm authority of a man who had spent his life on the sea. Alongside Lennon and Coneys were Tyler’s cousins Ellen and Kevin. The voyage was set for June 5th.

The Ocean Beckons

As the Megan Jaye eased away from Murphy’s Dock that warm June evening, Lennon looked out over the water and said, “This is cool. I’m moving out of the clouds, moving forward into a clear horizon.” He didn’t know then how literal his words would become.

The first 30 hours at sea were uneventful. Lennon served as the ship’s cook, preparing meals in the galley and embracing the camaraderie of his new crew. He was open and friendly, recalling memories of The Beatles and listening intently to the stories of others. According to Coneys, he had a genuine curiosity about their lives and was in good spirits, relishing the detachment from fame.

But calm seas rarely last in the North Atlantic.

Into the Storm

By Friday, June 6th, the passage to Bermuda had transformed dramatically. After a relatively calm start to their voyage, the Megan Jaye was now entering far more treacherous waters. The weather began to shift rapidly as they approached the Gulf Stream, a powerful Atlantic current known not only for its temperature changes but also for its ability to spawn unpredictable storms. For Cap’n Hank Halsted, an experienced sailor who had navigated this stretch many times, these were the conditions he had quietly feared from the outset.

The sky darkened to a threatening grey, with thick cloud cover enveloping the sloop and limiting visibility. Swells began to build beneath the vessel, lifting and dropping the hull in slow, exaggerated heaves. Rain started to lash the deck in bursts. The Gulf Stream’s collision of warm and cold fronts had begun to generate dangerous atmospheric instability. Then, sometime in the early hours of Saturday, June 7th, the storm arrived in full—a force-eight gale with winds gusting at 40 to 46 knots and waves cresting up to 20 feet.

As Coneys would later recall, “Everything busted loose.” The storm did not announce itself gently, it arrived violently, catching the Megan Jaye amidships with a punishing rhythm. “The storm knocked us all apart,” he said. “The waves were huge. If you could have called a cab, you would have. The sea is so big and the boat is so small.”

Caught in the notorious Bermuda Triangle—an expanse of ocean mythologised for its unpredictability and danger—they were surrounded by a roaring void. The wind shrieked through the rigging like a banshee. The boat’s dodger, a protective structure covering the companionway hatch, was torn loose by the pounding surf. Without it, torrents of water began flooding through the open hatch and into the cramped cabin below, soaking the interior and those trying to ride out the storm within. Supplies shifted dangerously. Sickened and demoralised, Coneys and his cousins, Ellen and Kevin, could barely function, incapacitated by seasickness and fatigue.

For over thirty hours, Halsted had manned the wheel with dogged determination. But even his veteran endurance had its limits. His eyes, bloodshot from salt and lack of sleep, blinked against the spray. He knew he could no longer safely steer the sloop through the storm. If he faltered or lost control, the consequences could be catastrophic. As he weighed his options, only one man remained upright: John Lennon.

Despite being a novice sailor and the least physically imposing member of the crew, Lennon had kept his footing. He had never encountered conditions like this, not even the metaphorical storms of fame could compare. Halsted turned to him with a mixture of urgency and trust.

“Hey! Come on up here, big boy. You’ve got to drive this little puppy ’cause I gotta go to sleep.”

Lennon’s initial reaction was understandable, utter disbelief. “Jeez, Hank,” he said with a nervous grin, “all I’ve got are these skinny little guitar-playing muscles.” But it was no joke. Halsted was serious, and there was no one else left. With no time for hesitation, Lennon tightened a safety harness around his waist and clipped it to the cockpit. The only barrier between himself and being flung overboard into the raging Atlantic was that tether and his grip on the wheel.

Halsted gave him one final piece of advice before staggering below decks to collapse in his bunk: “Focus on the horizon, not the compass.”

And with that, Lennon was alone at the helm.

The spray stung his face like needles. Waves crashed over the bow and across the deck, saturating him from head to toe. The wheel jerked with each wave that struck the rudder, demanding constant adjustment. But something primal surged within him. For the first time in years, he was being tested, not as a celebrity, a songwriter, or a symbol, but as a human being facing down the raw elements.

The Viking Awakens

At first, John Lennon was paralysed by fear. The cockpit of the Megan Jaye was no sanctuary, it was exposed, constantly awash in frigid Atlantic spray. Each wave that crashed over the bow seemed to strike directly at him, the water blinding and stinging, driven by the relentless wind. His glasses, already fogged, were rendered almost useless as the storm smeared saltwater across the lenses. Every lurch of the wheel reminded him just how fragile their boat was in the face of nature’s vast, ungovernable power.

He later recalled, “I was smashed in the face by waves for six solid hours… It’s like being on stage; once you’re on, there’s no getting off.” The comparison was telling. In both situations, the initial surge of adrenaline was accompanied by vulnerability—exposure to forces beyond your control, whether the expectations of an audience or the raw might of the sea. But unlike a stage, there was no script to follow, no rehearsed chords to lean on. This was elemental and unscripted, a test of will.

And then, something remarkable occurred. Roughly fifteen minutes into his stint at the helm, a change came over him, not sudden, but sure, like an inner tide turning. The panic began to ebb. His white-knuckled grip loosened, not in surrender, but in recognition. The sea, though terrifying, was not his enemy, it was a presence to be reckoned with, to be ridden like a wild horse. He leaned into the motion of the boat, found the rhythm of its pitch and roll, and began to feel part of something larger.

Lennon’s terror transmuted into exhilaration. The same storm that had overwhelmed him now became his proving ground. He began shouting old sailor songs into the wind—not out of bravado, but instinct. These were echoes of sea ballads he’d known as a boy growing up in Liverpool, a port city whose cultural memory was steeped in maritime heritage. In that moment, Lennon was every man who had ever steered a boat into the storm and come out the other side changed.

“I felt like a Viking,” he later said, “Jason and the Golden Fleece.” The comparison to myth was apt. Like the Greek hero sailing in search of something precious, Lennon was unknowingly reclaiming something long-lost—his sense of self. The years of withdrawal, of creative silence, of feeling adrift in his own fame, seemed to fall away in that tempest.

He wasn’t simply steering a vessel; he was confronting his own doubts, his own boundaries. For six hours, lashed to the helm, he stood in open defiance of the wind, his clothes drenched, his eyes squinting through salt and rain, his voice roaring above the storm.

When Cap’n Halsted finally climbed back on deck after a much-needed sleep, he was astonished. There, still at the wheel, was Lennon—grinning, soaked to the bone. “What an accomplishment,” Halsted said later. “He went through a full-on catharsis.”

Coneys saw it too. “He was up there at the helm like a madman on an adventure,” he said. But it was more than that. In the eyes of the young sailor who had once sold Lennon his first dinghy, this was no longer the reserved, contemplative figure from Long Island. This was a man reborn, baptised not in fire, but in sea spray.

Lennon himself would later tell Playboy, “Once I accepted the reality of the situation, something greater than me took over… I started to shout out old sea shanties in the face of the storm, screaming at the thundering sky.” It was a moment of sublime clarity, of complete surrender to the now, where the boundaries between fear and joy, self and sea, seemed to vanish.

Arrival in Fairylands

On June 11th, the battered but intact Megan Jaye sailed into Hamilton Harbour. Lennon stepped onto dry land in Bermuda, inscribing the logbook with the whimsical note: “Dear Megan, there is no place like nowhere.” He left behind a caricature self-portrait, a drawing of the boat under sunset sails, and a note for the captain: “Hank – love John Lennon.”

He had arrived at Fairylands, a fitting name for the quiet estate in Bermuda where he would stay for the next two months. Here, the transformation that began in the storm found its fullest expression. No longer paralysed by writer’s block, Lennon began composing again.

With a modest recording setup and a newfound sense of purpose, he worked on songs like Watching the Wheels, Woman, and Starting Over. These would become the heart of Double Fantasy, the final album he would complete with Yoko Ono. He even began planning to tour once more, something unthinkable just a few years prior.

Fairylands gave Lennon the peace to reflect, but the storm had given him the fire.

The Journey That Changed Everything

The significance of the Megan Jaye voyage cannot be overstated. After years of uncertainty, self-doubt, and retreat from music, the voyage reminded Lennon of who he was and what he was capable of. “This was an epiphany,” said Coneys. “You could do anything now.”

And in many ways, he did. That creative burst in Bermuda would produce his final studio recordings. Just months later, on December 8th 1980, John Lennon would be shot outside the Dakota building in New York City. But the songs he left behind, imbued with love, reflection, and renewal, carry the spirit of that voyage.

Perhaps more than anything, the storm at sea symbolised his triumph over fear, and the recovery of something he thought he’d lost: himself.

As he once sang, “We all shine on, like the moon and the stars and the sun.” In that moment, lashed to the helm of a small sloop in a raging Atlantic storm, John Lennon shone like never before.

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Sources:

• Chip Madinger & Scott Raile, Lennonology: Strange Days Indeed—A Scrapbook of Madness

• Scott Neil, Lennon Bermuda

• David Sheff, All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono

• BBC Radio 4, Imagine John Lennon’s Bermuda Adventure

• Playboy Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono (1980)