The Storm, the Stars, and the Sea: John Lennon’s 1980 Sailing Voyage to Bermuda

Jun 8, 2025
10 min read

Collage of a John Lennon sailing, wearing different outfits, on a yacht. Ocean in background, diverse expressions, relaxed mood, sunny day.

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.

Five Years of Silence

To understand why the Bermuda voyage mattered so much, you need to know what the five years before it had looked like. Sean Taro Ono Lennon was born on 9 October 1975, his father's thirty-fifth birthday. After Sean's birth, Lennon stepped away from music entirely. No albums, no tours, no interviews. He got up at 6am every day to plan Sean's meals, walked him through Central Park, baked bread, and later said he was content "looking after the baby." Yoko, meanwhile, managed the family's business affairs from their apartment at the Dakota on the Upper West Side, where they eventually accumulated 28 rooms.

Man in yellow jacket smokes on a boat with a child in a red life vest. Blue water and distant shoreline in background. Relaxed mood.

Lennon described leaving music as a conscious decision. "Finally, Yoko said, 'You don't have to do it anymore,'" he later told the Los Angeles Times. "I was shocked. I had never thought that: Could the world get along without another John Lennon album? Could I get along without it? I finally realized that the answer to both questions was yes." His last stage appearance had been in April 1975. His last single had been "Stand by Me," taken from the Rock 'n' Roll covers album. Then, nothing.

By 1980, something had shifted. Paul McCartney's "Coming Up" had caught his ear and was driving him, as he jokingly complained, "crackers." And Yoko had a handful of songs she wanted to record. The plan was for an EP, maybe. Then Lennon went to sea, and it became something else entirely.

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 5 June.

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, 6 June, 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, 7 June, the storm arrived in full: a force-eight gale with winds gusting at 40 to 46 knots and waves cresting up to 20 feet.

Two men on a sailboat at sea; one in a yellow jacket, one steering in a denim shirt. The mood is relaxed and adventurous.

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. 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. 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. 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: "Focus on the horizon, not the compass."

And with that, Lennon was alone at the helm.

The spray stung his face. 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.

Collage of sailors on a yacht. Various people steer, pose, and relax. Ocean backdrop, sunny. Blue, yellow, and white hues create a vibrant mood.

The Viking Awakens

At first, Lennon was paralysed by fear. The cockpit was exposed, constantly awash in frigid Atlantic spray. His glasses were rendered useless as the storm smeared saltwater across the lenses. Every lurch of the wheel reminded him just how small the boat was against the ocean.

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 exposure to forces beyond your control. But unlike a stage, there was no script to follow, no rehearsed chords to lean on.

Then, roughly fifteen minutes in, something shifted. The panic began to ebb. He leaned into the motion of the boat, found the rhythm of its pitch and roll, and started to feel part of something larger. Lennon began shouting old sea shanties into the wind, echoes of the ballads he'd known growing up in Liverpool, a port city steeped in maritime tradition.

"I felt like a Viking," he later said, "Jason and the Golden Fleece." For six hours, lashed to the helm, he stood in the teeth of the gale.

When Cap'n Halsted finally climbed back on deck after a few hours of 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." 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.

Lennon himself later told 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." He later described the voyage as "the most fantastic experience I ever had."

Handwritten notes on paper with doodles. Includes phrases like "great time, great food," and "we loved it!" Expressions of joy and gratitude.

Arrival in Fairylands

On 11 June, the battered but intact Megan Jaye sailed into Hamilton Harbour. Lennon stepped onto dry land in Bermuda, inscribing the logbook with the 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 quiet estate in Bermuda's Windsor district where he would stay for the next two months. Here, the transformation that began in the storm found its fullest expression.

Two people in yellow raincoats on a boat. One steers with a blue lantern nearby, creating a nautical and adventurous mood.

Two Months in Bermuda

Lennon had rented the property under the name John Greene, telling the estate agent who found it that he wanted to stay for a while and bring his family down from New York. He wasn't immediately recognised. Bermuda suited him: he cycled around St George's with four-year-old Sean, explored the Bermuda Botanical Gardens in Hamilton, and swam and sailed in a borrowed dinghy off the Fairylands dock.

One of his first nights on the island, Lennon wandered into a nightclub on Front Street in Hamilton. The place was packed, and the DJ was playing "Rock Lobster" by the B-52s. The strange, whooping rhythms and undulating vocal style transfixed him. He already knew the B-52s were huge Yoko Ono fans, that they'd been directly inspired by her avant-garde vocal approach. Hearing a packed dancefloor respond to something that sounded like Yoko's music told him something he hadn't known he needed to hear: that there was an audience out there who'd be ready for what they were planning.

"The next day I picked up the guitar," he said later. "I was so centred after the experience at sea that I was tuned in, or whatever, to the cosmos. And all these songs came."

Wandering the Botanical Gardens one afternoon, Lennon came across a freesia variety labelled "Double Fantasy." The idea of a fantasy being doubled, of two people's imaginations merging into one project, caught him immediately. He called Yoko in New York and told her he'd found the album title.

Armed with an Ovation acoustic guitar and two Panasonic boom boxes set to record, Lennon worked prolifically through June and July. He composed around 25 songs in total during his time in Bermuda, including "(Just Like) Starting Over," "Watching the Wheels," "Woman," "Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)," "I'm Losing You," "Nobody Told Me," and "Borrowed Time." Many of these would form the backbone of Double Fantasy and its posthumous follow-up, Milk & Honey. Yoko was writing too, in New York, and they exchanged songs over the phone. "I'd write 'Let Me Count the Ways' and call him in Bermuda and say, 'Listen, what do you think about this?'" Yoko later recalled.

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

Five people are joyfully gathered on a sailboat, with blue sea and sky in the background. One holds up a large fish, others are smiling.

The Journey That Changed Everything

The significance of the Megan Jaye voyage can't 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."

Lennon returned to New York at the end of July 1980. He and producer Jack Douglas booked the Hit Factory on West 48th Street, and recording on Double Fantasy began on 7 August, with a band that included guitarist Earl Slick, bassist Tony Levin, and drummer Andy Newmark. The album was released by Geffen Records on 17 November 1980 to mixed reviews. It went on to win the Grammy for Album of the Year. Lennon had been dead for three months by the time the award was presented.

On 8 December 1980, three weeks after the album's release, Lennon was shot outside the Dakota by Mark David Chapman. He'd spent the afternoon at the Hit Factory recording Yoko's "Walking on Thin Ice." He was 40 years old.

What he left behind tells the story of where he'd been. "Watching the Wheels" explains, calmly and without regret, why he'd spent five years out of the spotlight. "Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)" is a lullaby for Sean. "(Just Like) Starting Over" sounds like exactly what it is: a man who nearly drowned in the Atlantic, got back on his feet, and decided to play again. "In a way, we're involved in a kind of experiment," he told the New York Times in November 1980. "Could the family be the inspiration for art, instead of drinking or drugs or whatever? I'm interested in finding that out."

Less than a month later, he was gone. The songs he wrote on that Bermuda hillside, with a borrowed guitar and two boom boxes, are the closest thing we have to an answer.