This port is used amongst managers for the cluster state. So yes, it is normal that works don’t bind that port.
I am not sure if it’s related, but I kind of recall that back when I still used ESXi, I had to enable promiscuous mode on the vswitch.
Your problems are most likely related to: networking - Docker-swarm overlay network is not working for containers in different hosts - Stack Overflow
Update2:
you might also find this known issues post useful:
Known issues with VMware