John Lennon Was a Changed Man After Steering a Boat Through a Violent Storm

In the summer of 1980, John Lennon traveled by boat to Bermuda, where he would work on songs for his final studio album, Double Fantasy. He spent two months on the island writing songs and relaxing. His journey there was less laid back, however. He set out from Rhode Island on a boat. At one point, he had to steer through a storm, which left him a changed man.

John Lennon traveled to Bermuda on a boat in 1980

Lennon set out from Newport, Rhode Island, with Captain Hank Halsted and a crew on June 4, 1980. After two calm, clear days, the ship encountered stormy weather in the Gulf Stream.

“It’s a weather-maker,” Halsted later said, per Salon. “The Gulf Stream just always puts a big spin on things.”

The rough water left all the passengers — with the exception of Halsted and Lennon — seasick. 

“It started to get grey and everything busted loose from there,” Lennon’s sailing instructor, Tyler Coneys, said. “The storm knocked us all apart. It was brutal. 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. We were on 20 degrees of keel. The massive waves were coming up behind like buildings. We’d be surfing down these liquid mountains. I was like, ‘Oh, my God. I hope we live.'”

John Lennon steered the boat through a storm

After hours of steering the boat on his own, Halsted realized that he had to sleep, or he’d be putting everyone’s lives at risk. As Lennon was the only one who wasn’t seasick, Halsted instructed him to steer the boat. Though he wasn’t sure he’d be able to steer the ship, he realized he had to do it.

“I was in a major storm for six hours, driving that boat, you know, and keeping it on the course,” he said. “And I was buried under water. I was smashed in the face by waves for six solid hours. It’s an incredible experience ’cause it won’t go away, you know. You can’t change your mind. It’s like being on stage; once you’re on, there’s no getting off. And a couple of the waves had me on my knees. I was just hanging on with me hands on the wheel, but I did have the rope around me to the side, but it was very powerful weather.”

The experience sounds terrifying, but Lennon said he was having “the time of [his] life.”

“I was screaming sea shanties and shouting at the gods,” he said. “I felt like a Viking, you know. Jason and the Golden Fleece.”

Lennon’s ability to steer the ship as a relative novice was impressive. According to Halsted, it also left him a changed man.

“I met a different guy,” he said. “He was totally washed, exuberant, ecstatic.”

He worked on new material when he arrived in Bermuda

When Lennon arrived in Bermuda, he began working on new music. After the harrowing, exhilarating experience, he felt uniquely inspired to write. In total, he wrote 30 new songs in the two months in Bermuda. 

“He was tired of writing songs for kids,” his friend Nancy Gosnell told The Daily Beast. “He wanted to write music for adults and couldn’t wait to get back in the studio and start recording.”