Well it took some time, effort, a lot of money and a great deal of patience, but we are underway again. We departed from Loggerhead Marina in North Palm Beach, FL at noon, Tuesday June 5, 2018. We are headed to Bermuda. On the course we have plotted from the Lake Worth (Palm Beach) inlet, our journey will take us some 954nm, starting with a run north east in the Gulf Stream. We will follow the Gulf Stream up to about Cape Canaveral and then start to turn more east than north in search of a NOAA weather buoy that lies 120nm east of Cape Canaveral. This buoy should yield fish. Once we pass the buoy we have a long run across the Bermuda Triangle until we reach the west of Bermuda and then traverse the south shore of Bermuda and enter St. George’s harbor on the east end of the island to clear immigration and customs. We expect the journey to take 5 days in decent weather.
As we clear the Palm Beach inlet at approximately 1:30 p.m. of June 5, we are met with extremely calm seas and a northerly flowing Gulf Stream current that is less than 10 miles offshore. Within 30 minutes we start to get the push from the stream and our speed increases from our normal 7.5kts to 8.5kts and as we proceed into the middle of the stream about an hour later we are ripping the new bottom paint off the hull as we make 12-13kts. We have an expanded crew for this leg of the journey as keeping watch for five days with only two of us seems a bit daunting, especially if anything goes wrong. Our crew includes two seasoned boat captains that have recently concluded a stint as charter boat captains for a 94 foot luxury boat that goes back and forth between Stuart, FL and the Abacos in the Bahamas. Matt and Alexandra Moore were working on a charter boat, AquaLife, in Stuart, FL when I met them a year ago. I was neck deep in learning VAMOS and they were getting the new AquaLife ready for the charter season. We became friendly sharing stories of our mutual successes and occasional failures of boat project work and lent a friendly hand from time-to-time. Matt and Alex are from South Carolina and both worked in commercial fishing and ran offshore charter boats. Both are somewhat fishy for sure! I asked them to crew for us on this journey shortly after they parted ways with the owner of the charter boat. It worked out well because neither have made the passage to Bermuda and neither have visited Bermuda so they were anxious for the adventure.
Before we get on to the Bermuda trip, I’ll touch briefly on the winter months spent at Sunset Bay Marina in Stuart, FL and the preparation we were doing for our second season aboard VAMOS. When we arrived back in Florida from last season we quickly decided we would re-up for a second season. The conversation quickly turned to two often discussed subjects: “Where do we want to go?” And “What maintenance, upgrades, changes do we want to make to the boat?” These were open subjects for most of December. After talking with a few cruising couples that we met along the way last year, we decided we would re-visit Nova Scotia since we really arrived too late last year to experience some the best parts of cruising the Maritime Islands of Canada. We decided the twist would be to head off to Nova Scotia about the same time as the mass exodus from south Florida is in full swing, but we would attempt to go by way of Bermuda. At least two couples that we met in the NE made the trip last year and we conversed with both briefly before deciding this would be the tentative plan. Bermuda was home for Julia and I from 1996-2005 and we still have plenty of friends and acquaintances in Bermuda, so the thought of arriving on our “second home” and catching up with everyone was plenty of motivation for us. Once we decided on this route, we reached out to the organizer of last year’s Nordhavn cruise to the Maritime’s and announced our grand plan. The word spread and we met another couple, Keith and Romy Olaisen who own a Nord 47, Acqua Dolce, that had a similar plan. We got together with Keith and Romy and quickly discovered we had a lot in common and we started sharing information and making tentative plans for our trip to Bermuda and onward trip to Nova Scotia.
Two big items needed to be addressed for these long ocean passages: the first is weather forecasting and the second was crew. I reached out to numerous friends who have expressed interest in ocean passages and to people we have met along the way in our new boat life, and I struck out. Many were interested but life gets in the way for most people. Julia and I have no real schedule but most people aren’t as fortunate. Our voyage requires someone with boating experience who can be flexible with departure and arrival and will be OK being unplugged from society for at least five days. Ha! Easier said then done. Alex and Matt fit the bill and we started making our plans with them for the first half of our ocean voyage. We are fortunate to have experienced crew who are young and energetic and whom we can get along with. For the second leg, from Bermuda to Halifax, NS, our friend Eric Jacquard will join us. Eric is a commercial fishermen with two boats in Wedgeport, NS. He and his two sons, Camille and Joel, fish lobsters and Blue fin tunas. Eric and his wife, Yvonne, took us in last year when we spent a couple of weeks in nearby Yarmouth. We helped Yvonne get Eric out to lunch and dinner a few times and Eric was our unofficial tour guide to NS. He and Yvonne took us to Lunenburg, Mahone Bay and Port Mouton and Eric frequently stopped by the boat to give us fresh lobster, clams and crab. Eric has lived his life on the water and having him aboard for the 3-4 day crossing from Bermuda to Halifax gives Julia and I a great sense of comfort.
In terms of the weather, Julia grabbed the reins and started researching apps for long range, maritime weather predictions. There are plenty of them, but she quickly started focusing on Windy, Predict Wind, Buoy Weather, and Wind Finder Pro. Some of these are free and some cost a few bucks to download, but they all came with recommendations from people who make a living on the water. She also research some professional services who can provide custom weather forecasts based on your tentative route. We ended up using Commanders Weather for a verbal consultation after reviewing all of the available information. They confirmed our forecast and gave us some more information about potential weather fronts that might impact us on our journey. The subject of weather was discussed frequently over the winter. We decided early on that going to Nova Scotia by way of Bermuda was a “nice to have”. It would either work out because it was meant to be, or it would not. We were not going to make it happen and we were not doing the trip for thrill seeking. We both agreed that we would get a good weather forecast for our trip or we would change our plans.
In late May the south Florida weather was horrible. It rained every day from May 12 to the end of month. In addition to making life a bit depressing, it made it challenging to prepare for a lengthy offshore run. We had many projects outstanding and we could not leave until we completed them - much more on the project world later. We were told that June was the best time for a crossing of this magnitude on a pleasure craft. The Gulf Stream conditions are right and the winds are generally calm and from the south, south east or south west. This is important because if you have opposing wind and current in the Gulf Stream the conditions can deteriorate quickly and you can have some really rough weather. Better to learn this from others than to experience it ourselves. We had been using June 1 as our tentative departure date, just to have a date to share with people. As the rain persisted in May, it was quickly apparent that we would not be ready by June 1. With a concerted effort by both Julia and I, we were able to be ready for June 5 and as fate would have it, the weather gods gave us a good forecast!
Ah, but before get to Bermuda, we had lots of fun making improvements to the boat. These are sometimes referred to as opportunities to learn and spend money. The list of improvements that we made for VAMOS is so long that I won’t even try to go into detail on all of it. I will just highlight a few items. First we decided to replace all of the outdated, analogue electronics with new, digital electronics. We picked Furuno as the manufacturer for the navigational equipment mainly based on their reputation and the reviews of their radar equipment. Radar is important to us because we travel slowly, at night, and in the fog so we need to know with some certainty what is going on around us so we can stay out of trouble. Once we concluded we would install Furuno equipment, we needed to pick an installer. We had a couple of recommendations from people who were happy with their work so I interviewed them and we picked Craig Hogan, Hogan Marine Systems, Inc. Craig, Julia and I made a plan and scope of work which of course we changed along the way to include various other options that we didn’t know existed or didn’t know we “needed” when the original plan took shape. Craig and I did all of the work together, with the exception of the wood work. For the wood work, I recruited my fishing buddy from Cayman who now lives in Miami, Brandon Cunningham. Craig and I pulled the boat apart for three weeks, removing old cable and installing new cable. I have already explained that electrical is my weakest system. I’m scared to death of electricity, don’t know how it works and completely incapable of winging it like I do with many other systems on the boat. Working with Craig helped me progress along the scale of electronics expertise from completely inept all the way up to inexperienced, junior, apprentice electrician. Now when I approached an electrical project I have some sense of what I should be trying to do and when I go to the store to get the necessary parts and I can converse with some level of experience. I still stink with electrical work, but I have improved a lot to get to that point. The electronics upgrade ended up taking more like six weeks and the last couple of unplanned steps were accomplished at Bahia Mar Marina in Ft. Lauderdale as part of sea trial for the electronics that had been installed to date. We now have a PepWave router that provides internet on the boat from either a WiFi connection or cellular connection and it seems reliable so far. We installed an HDTV antennae for Direct TV and we installed an air antenna for free HD TV. We have all new chart plotters, radar, AIS, transducers, data sharing displays, stereo, amplifier, speakers and much more. And oddly, I think I know how it all works... And it is all mounted in our pilot house with beautiful new wood panels that match our existing veneers - Thank You Brandon and Craig!
The next project we decided needed to get completed was to replace to *#$!ing toilet in the master suite. This toilet caused me no end of angst last year and its days were number from the day we arrived back at the dock in Stuart in November. There were more choices for toilets than you might think and there were a lot of considerations in terms of style, function, cost, etc. Once we found the one we wanted it had to be ordered and eventually we discovered it was on back order. Meanwhile, we realized that taking the old one out meant that the wood base that it sits on and veneer on the wall behind would need to be replaced. Brandon to the rescue. He matched the wood and veneer and put it together for us so that it looks like original equipment. I used my new found electrical skills to wire the new toilet and my old plumbing skills to round it out. So far so good. This model takes care of business!
The last “significant” project that was planned was to haul out in April and have the stabilizers and thrusters serviced, the bottom painted, zincs replaced and a beauty treatment to the hull and upper. Sounds straight forward, eh? Not so! The yards were so busy I could barely get someone to return a call to schedule a haul out for a month forward. I ended up visiting several yards in person to receive the “yes sir treatment” only to be followed up with no response. Unbelievable given the cost of haul out. I determined that the common problem with the boat yards was that the person in charge of scheduling the haul outs and the launching did not understand their jobs as I would think it should be (ha - of course I know better even though I have never worked in a boat yard - not everything changes with retirement!). These guys should be under-promising and over-delivering big time and they should be uber organized. Mostly I experienced people who over-promised and under- delivered because they were disorganized. On top of that, the yard sucks! It is dirty beyond belief and as unorganized as the scheduling. Someone, presumably me, needs to be at the boat every day that you expect work to get work completed, otherwise, nothing happens. Often, as is the case with the yard that we eventually chose, the yard itself does only minimal amounts of work - like bottom painting - and everything else is completed by outside contractors who have been selected by the owners and have passed muster with the yard officials. In other words, a subcontractor who is willing to share 5-10% of their revenue with the yard - oh, and also has up-to-date insurance. Our guys from Advantage Marine Services did a great job, even if they did show up one day late and take twice as long as expected. They finished within my expectations :) and their work seems very good. And the beauty treatment that was applied turned out well and was delivered in a timely fashion - thank you Eduardo and Brian.
The kicker in terms of big projects came in late March when Julia and I were using the davit (crane to you land lubbers) to launch the dinghy and test some systems on the dinghy. The davit had a oil leak that had presented itself from time to time. Apparently, it wasn’t going to heal itself with time... After we launched and retrieved the dinghy, we had a very noticeable oil puddle near the base of the davit. Ugh! We immediately consulted my Nordhavn guru, John Hoffman, and he told us (1) this crane has been rebuilt once, (2) it is an Indonesian crane that does not have parts available, and (3) no one in the area likes to work on them. The davit is critical to boating on long voyages, especially if you want to be on anchor frequently. You need to launch and retrieve the dinghy with confidence. We were already babying our davit because last year an “unnecessary” part fell out of one day onto the deck and I could not figure out where it belonged. I didn’t fuss too much since the davit worked better without the part, but it was a sign of things to come. Enter last major project of the season - a new davit. Shit damn! Another reason to pull the boat apart, make a mess and spend a great deal of money.
We quickly selected a popular model, called Steel Head - manufactured in Canada. We had the crane modified to get an extra two feet of reach and we found contractors to work on necessary fiberglass alterations for the installations. The crane was due to be delivered while we were in haul out and an honest to goodness crane was scheduled to come offload the old one and load the new on board. Best laid plans! The new davit was only finished being built the day it was supposed to be delivered so the old crane came off and no replacement was loaded on board. I figured I would cross the bridge to loading the replacement davit when I got their which of course happened two weeks later when Julia and I were in Vero Beach for family vacation. Although inconvenient, it provided a chance to show the boat off to some of the family who have not seen it yet :). We worked with a Palm Beach boat yard and a Nordhavn specialist to have the davit loaded on the boat deck of VAMOS and believe it or not, it went as planned and on time. Let the installation project begin! It should take two days to finish the installation of the fiberglass work and two days to install. I figured it might be completed by the time Julia and I headed back to the boat after family vacation. And then came the rain! It started raining a couple days before the davit was delivered and it rained for three weeks straight. It is kind of impossible for fiberglass guys to do their work in the wind and rain, even when really motivated to do so.
We were using June 1 as our planning date to depart West Palm for Bermuda. As Memorial Day came and went it was still raining, but the fiber glass base was completed. Now I just
needed the davit to be installed and connected. God smiled on us and on Wednesday, May 30, the davit was completed and tested - just in time to beat the next big rain storm. The contractor that installed the davit is a pretty good guy. His company is called Bull Head Marine. I didn’t give it a second thought until I saw him in action. This guy is all brute force and no finesse what so ever. I know some of you who know me are saying “sounds like Bart!” - but really this guy is a Bull Head. However, my biggest fear with the new davit was that it would not be installed properly and it would cause real damage one day. Not a problem. Our davit is secure - even if it suffered a few dents and scrapes during installation..
At this point, while trapped on the boat in a down pore, Julia and I did what we do best - make a list! We made a list of things we needed to complete before we could take off. This included things to do on the boat, provisioning (remember this means shopping) and taking care of business at the condo. We examined the list, assigned responsibilities and determined the earliest we could be ready was Tuesday, June 5. This required focus and dedication - i.e. less drinking than normal so we could get the stuff done!
Let the provisioning begin! Our plan is go to Bermuda for 2-3 weeks and then head straight to Halifax, NS at the end of June and stay out in the Bras D’Or Lakes in Cape Bretton (the Far East end of Nova Scotia) for 4-6 weeks and then return to Yarmouth at the far west end in time for me to join team Jacquard for the Wedgeport Tuna Tournament Aug 19-23. Bermuda is a lovely place (we lived there for 10 years) but it is not a mecca of grocery shopping and the lakes in Cape Bretton are meant to be fairly sparse, so we planned to put our storage freezer to the test for the first time. We prepared a menu for the Bermuda crossing which meant meals for four people for five days (plus two days cushion in case stuff happened on the way) and then we stock piled dry goods and frozen meat for June/July/August. We loaded 10lbs of tenderloin, 30lbs of whole roaster chickens, 4lbs of ground lamb, 5lbs of boneless lamb, 3lbs of ground beef, 8lbs of boston butt, 2lbs of jumbo lump crab meat, two pounds of mild Italian sausage, 5lbs of venison tenderloin, 2lbs each of frozen shrimp and scallops, 6lbs of baby back ribs and more! We also made two lasagna's (we froze one), a triple batch of seafood chowder, seven pounds of Julia’s pulled pork BBQ, a batch of pesto pasta with chicken and sun dried tomatoes, a batch of pesto pasta with shrimp, a crab quiche, a smoked salmon quiche, and a dozen hard boiled eggs. Our traveling companions contributed a frozen chicken pot pie, a venison meat loaf, the venison tenderloin, and a batch of potato salad. We also had plenty of spinach salad. This crew was not going to starve and if the seas are calm, we should really eat well and enjoy the culinary experience of a five day crossing to Bermuda.
Getting sober! Hi, I’m Bart and I’ve now been sober for four full days! (I’m writing this on day five of the crossing so presumably I will make it one more day before celebrating our successful arrival in St. George’s and completing our stay at the floating Betty Ford clinic!). I’m not really a heavy drinker, but as you know, both Julia and I enjoy our cocktails. Mainly we enjoy and bottle of wine with dinner and probably pre and post dinner drinks. OK, I know that sounds like a lot, but... Well anyway, we need to be sober at all times of the crossing so we have been mentally preparing for the prospect of five days of sobriety, and occasionally, we even prepared physically by skipping pre or post dinner drinks :). Cruising is a VERY social experience, so we equate socializing with drinking. It’s like a Rorschach test, there is no right answers for what you equate socializing with... Anyway, we did provisioning for our socializing. Thanks to my friend Wayne for helping with the loading of the fourteen cases of wine that we departed with - I plan to host some cocktail parties in Bermuda and in NS and let’s face it, I’m spoiled and like to drink good (very good most of the time) wine. Better not to risk the chance of not being able to find the good stuff on the road so I stocked up. We also loaded four cases of beer (we can source beer anywhere) 3 liters each of vodka, Kahlua and Baileys (mud slide makings), 3 liters of Bombay Sapphire gin and Appleton Estate rum (VX) and a liter each of Jamison’s whiskey and Knob Creek bourbon. That should get us through the summer and back to Maine...
Day One - after departing Palm Beach and heading north in the Gulf Stream, we quickly settled into a routine with watch standing being divided into 3 hour segments with Bart leading off, followed by Julia, Alex and Matt. This takes us through a 12 hour segment, and then we repeat it. This means I have the noon to 3p.m. shift and the midnight to 3 a.m. shift. Julia has the 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. shift and 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. shift and so on. We decided at each shift change, the on-coming watch stander would record a set of numbers ranging from our current position (what if we lost GPS???) to the water temperature, engine temp, battery voltage, etc. (thanks to Jeff Merrill for setting this all up for us).
We also decided, whenever practical, someone would go into the engine room and record engine room data, mainly temperature readings of various elements of the main engine and propulsion system. We use a pyrometer (i.e. a laser) to obtain the readings and then we write them down in columns. This allows the reader/recorder to observe changes in the temperatures that may indicate a change or problem. Additionally, we decided we would change fuel every six hours - this means physically changing which of the four tanks are being used to supply fuel to the main engine and sometimes the generator - and we would do a burn - run up the engine rpms - every 12 hours. Lastly, once a day at noon, we decided to send out a pre-programmed message to 10 people who would receive a text via a Satellite system called Spot Tracker. The message says “This is Bart and Julia aboard VAMOS. Just checking in.”, and then it gives our longitude and latitude. There are other pre- programmed messages that can be sent too, like “This is Bart and Julia aboard VAMOS. We are in a non-life threatening situation and need your help!” And then the one you never want to use - S.O.S. Also at noon each day, we turn on the Satellite phone to make sure we get a signal (I don’t know what we would do if we didn’t...) and to check to see if we received any text messages from friends with the not entirely secret number to the sat phone. We also gave the sat phone number to a half dozen trusted people who programmed it into their phones in case we needed to call them in the middle of the night they would know it was us and they should answer.
The first day was exactly as forecast, winds of 10-15kts from the west, southwest and moderate seas of 3-5 feet but with a long period and coming from the southwest. Over night the winds were forecast to pick up to 20-25kts from about 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. and then decrease throughout the day. Again spot on. When the sun rose on Wednesday morning, we were in a 6 foot following sea with 5-6 second periods. This is less than ideal for a trawler like VAMOS, but it beats a head on sea and pitching back and forth for hours on end. As we approached noon on Wednesday, the seas calmed and the period increased. All good. We had lines in the water pretty much from the time we cleared the Lake Worth inlet and we had a couple significant strikes, but we didn’t land anything on day one. We dined on pesto pasta with shrimp for lunch and Lasagna for dinner - no garlic bread with the lasagna damn it! And also no Sangiovese.
On day two the weather continued to be good with following seas of 4-5 feet with 10-15 knot winds from the southwest. We started getting into a routine with the watch standing, eating, changing fuel back and forth to keep the boat level, and sending spot messages, etc. Sometime on day two we hooked a small yellow fin tuna that turned into sashimi later that day and the next.
Vamos has six fuel tanks - main tank port (995 gallons), main tank starboard (995 gallons), forward tank port (130 gallons), forward tank starboard (130 gallons), supply tank (30 gallons) and the wing engine tank (10 gallons) for a total of 2,290 gallons of fuel. When I bought the boat I was told that the two forward tanks had never been used and as I inspected them I saw that the handles for valves were all removed. For our trip to Bermuda I decided it was prudent to take as much fuel as possible so I wanted to put the forward tanks in service. This meant washing fuel through them and filtering the fuel a couple of times to get any dirt out of the system. This was all fine. When came time to leave, I wanted to burn the fuel out of the forward tanks first to get the weight out of the front of the boat. We also have to be conscious of burning fuel evenly between the port side and the starboard side or else the boat will list. So every six hours we change the tank that is supplying fuel to the main engine. The forward tanks don’t have sight gauges or any way of monitoring the fuel level so you have to make an informed guess. We typically burn 6 gallons per hour on the main engine so I figured we would run 18 hours on each of the forward two tanks and we would burn up approximately 108 gallons from each tank, leaving 22 gallons each. That would be sufficient for my purposes. When I went to set the fuel system up before departure, I realized that the labels on the fuel system were either wrong or the fuel lines for the forward two tanks were crossed. This seemed unlikely, but the labels were clear. This is important because I set the system up to have the unburned fuel that goes through the engine returned to the same tank that I was drawing from (approximately 20% of the fuel that goes to the engine is burned and the rest is returned to the system). Since my tanks were all full, if I returned fuel to the wrong tank, that tank would over flow and create a real mess. So my solution was return the unused fuel to the supply tank, which is actually recommended in the owners manual. The problem with returning to the supply tank is that the unburned fuel is very hot and the supply tank heats up thereby heating up the engine room. So I usually return the unburned fuel to the same tank as I draw from. At some point during the trip I decided to grab a flash light and trace the fuel lines so I could see if the labels were correct or not. Turns out they were mislabeled. At this point, I reset the fuel setup to return the unburned fuel to the tank it was drawing from. What I didn’t realize is that a significant amount of the fuel in the supply tank at the time I switched to the new setup was from the port tank so when I switched the setup to move to the starboard tank and then return fuel to the starboard tank, I captured some fuel from the port tank. Long story short, at 10 pm on the second night the main engine shut down because there was no fuel in the supply tank! The sound of a quiet engine when you are 300 miles offshore is deafening. I faced this problem once before in training, so I knew what to do and I had purchased a new tool to make bleeding the engine much easier. Matt and I had the system bled and the main engine running again in 10 minutes. I felt foolish because I was so sure of my calculations that I never thought about running out of fuel. That soon passed. On the next leg I don’t think we will have the same problem...
By day three we were humming along and the weather was improving from good to very good. At some point after lunch we had a double header with two nice mahi-mahi - a male that was 40 lbs and a female that was 25-30 lbs. Nice! Nice eating too! We dined on smoked salmon quiche and mahi-mahi. Tortilla was being her normal quiet, cuddly self but we were getting concerned because she had not peed or pooped for three days! We bought turf to put down so she had real grass. She loved it - as a bed! Near the end of day three she finally peed. The poop watch was still on though.
Day four was uneventful except that the weather improved again and the seas were pretty much totally calm. We trolled all day without even a bight. We were in 15,000 feet of water and not much sea life was evident. We dined on venison meat loaf and seafood chowder. By the end of day four we were getting excited about arriving. Tortilla did finally poop and we all celebrated this huge accomplishment.
Day Four and Five Weather was Beautiful On day five the seas remained calm and the wind was less than 5 knots. We bagged another, smaller mahi-mahi. Some time after mid-day, the line started ripping off the reel and then we saw a marlin jump.
I was really wanting to release a marlin during the trip so I grabbed the rod. 15 minutes later we were pulling the hook from 175 pound blue marlin and he swam away looking quite healthy. We were approaching Bermuda from the southwest. The first sign of life was light that we could see from the island. This occurred on Saturday evening at about 11 pm. I had the midnight to three a.m. shift and the light got brighter and by about 2 p.m. I could see the light from Gibbs Hill lighthouse. I checked in with Bermuda radio when were approximately 30 miles offshore from Bermuda. We had filled out on line information about the boat and passengers and the radio operator reaffirmed the information. I stayed on watch with Julia as we approached. By 5 a.m. we were making our approach to the southwest breaker and on down the south shore of the island. We slowed to idle speed for 30 minutes or so and waited for the sun to rise so we could approach in the light. Once we were on course and it was light I grabbed an hour sleep while Julia grabbed the binoculars and scoped out our old home. She woke me an hour later when we were off St. David’s lighthouse and we checked in a second time with Bermuda radio. We were cleared to enter the Harbour and go to the customs dock to check in. Customs and immigration was easy and no one even boarded the boat. A couple minutes later we were secured on wharf in St. George’s. We cracked a beer and got Tortilla on dry land so she could start marking spots!
The journey took four hours shy of five days and we covered 954 nautical miles and we burned 650 gallons of fuel for a total burn rate of 1.467 miles to the gallon. This was pretty much what we thought it should be except the fuel economy was slightly better than expected and we traveled about 45 miles further than expected because we did not take the most direct route to give us the best chance at good weather. All-in-all, it was fantastic and we can’t wait to enjoy Bermuda.