In the middle of the Gulf Stream or the Caribbean Current you do get long trains of thunderstorms, so much so that we sometimes sacrifice speed in order to get out of them at night. During the day you can see them a long way off and dodge most of them, but at night they can be nasty. Doing the 90-degree thing over to Cuba is the traditional route if you read some of the old sailing directions, but for some reason people today often seem to try the more direct route and sometimes luck out, but often don't. Coming back from Isla we did the same thing--looped way north and followed the traditional current while those who cut straight across fought counter currents a lot of the way. We were seeing 9 knots over the ground on the way back, and our usual cruising speed is about 6 in those conditions so we were picking up a bonus 3!