...I wish it would apply more regularly in my experience... (grin)

Each time I've done the trip, it's been pretty close to the wind... Last December, the only time we had wind behind the beam was for about 18 hours when crossing the Stream abeam of Hatteras, a cold front arrived and we had a pretty sporty ride for the crossing... When it moved to the NE, it died pretty quickly and we motorsailed for about a day trying to make as much easting as we could, then it filled in from the E and ESE, and we were hard on the wind for the remaining 900 miles, barely fetched Tortola, most boats would have wound up in Puerto Rico... Making Bermuda would have been tough on that trip, and taken us way off our route... Worst thing was, it was instant coffee virtually all the way, we did 98% of that trip on our ear, way too much heel for the built-in Miele cappucino maker aboard... (grin)

We were lucky to have a pair of excellent drivers aboard for that trip, two guys with a lot of experience on TP 52s in bigtime West Coast racing programs... The autopilot never came CLOSE to handling the conditions we had in the Stream, steering that thing for an hour or two was the most any of us could manage... (grin)...