Butterfield & Vallis co-owner Jim Butterfield and ten of his staff members arrived in New York City earlier this week aboard the sail training ship Spirit of Bermuda.

The triple-masted sloop left Bermuda last Saturday evening and arrived in the Big Apple on Wednesday morning.

During the ocean crossing Mr Butterfield and the rest of the crew experienced variable conditions as they made their way towards the east coast of the United States.

“It was absolutely terrific and we had a bit of everything,” Mr Butterfield said. “When we took off we had really good winds from the south west so we had really good speed and then we had a morning of torrential rains.”

Spirit’s progress was reduced to a trickle when the wind diminished once the rain subsided, affording Mr Butterfield and several other crew members the opportunity to take an unscheduled dip in the deep blue.

“We had a little soft spot where we all jumped overboard and went swimming, it got that light,” Mr Butterfield said. “In the middle of the Atlantic the captain (Karen McDonald) said ‘If you want to go for a dip this would be a good time to get your bathing suits on’ and most of us jumped overboard.

“Everyone thought we were going to get eaten by sharks, but no one did and then the winds filled in and we got the boat up to 16-and-a-half knots, which is a lot of speed for that boat. I think every single person had the time of their lives coming into New York travelling 16-and-a-half knots.”

During the four-day journey Spirit’s crew was divided into two watch teams.

“We did eight hours off and four hours on so each watch got lots of work to do and ample sleep,” Mr Butterfield said. “We tossed a few guys out of their bunks on the last night when we experienced a bit of heavy weather with maybe 25 knots of breeze and seven to eight feet seas.”

Mr Butterfield said the journey did not go without incident.

“A couple of guys got bounced across the floor but thankfully no one was injured,” he added. “Only one person suffered from a little bit of sea sickness for the first 48 hours. But other than that everyone was fine.

“The boat performed well, the captain is really, really great and the crew was very tolerant of all of us ‘I want to be a sailor kind of guys’. Everyone had the best time.”

Mr Butterfield has chartered Spirit in support of Bermuda Sloop Foundation’s award winning character development programme.

The former Olympic Games rower is due to set sail from New York for Newport, Rhode Island on Sunday and will be accompanied by several family members who have replaced his staff that have returned to Bermuda.

After a few days of rest in Narragansett Bay, Mr Butterfield and the rest of Spirit’s crew will set sail in the 49th Newport Bermuda Race, which gets underway a week today.

Spirit is competing in the Spirit of Tradition Division, one of five divisions in the 635-mile biennial race.