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I'm not surprised by the DSC—I knew it went to a pool and got divided, and at $20/day the workers are only going to get so much. Plus, there's been so much chatter over the years about the DSC not really giving much to the workers, and it was hard to believe there wasn't some fire behind all the smoke. I would say that I was surprised to hear that the stateroom attendants' latest contracts are for less money than they were before. Having them stretched more and for less pay—that just feels wrong to me.

Yeah, the crew barely have time to interact with the passengers anymore...the contracts got longer over the years, they seem more tired and overworked. I hope things turn around for them. The Joy is definitely recommended—it's our favorite ship in the NCL fleet. Enjoy your cruise and Go Phils / Go Birds!

They did indeed—it was pretty mild, and afterwards we just resumed traveling normally. That cruise on the Joy was a turning point. Definitely. The crewmember onboard stressed that the actual onboard crew is great—Roh does run a tight ship, and is well-liked by crew and passengers. The corporate choices and policies are spoiling the onboard synergy—I hope things turn around. We definitely will be trying that at least once, probably in 2027. The itinerary isn't great—Thursday to Thursday, with just 2 days in Bermuda + a stop in Charlestown, SC—but the idea of sailing on the Jewel down the Delaware River through to the Bay, under the Delaware Memorial Bridge and out to sea, that's just too good to resist. Plus in my own city! I want to cruise just so that NCL and the rest of the cruise industry knows that the demand from Philadelphia is there. I couldn't agree more. I hope you and your family have a great vacation! And don't feel the need to cut down your reviews to be lazy like mine (though you said it more nicely as "concise")—your reviews are the stuff of legends here! I've learned so much from them.

@mking8288, I noticed that the Joy's Navigation Channel has switched to the newer, fancier, not-1997 edition. They've also got StarLink aboard. I remember you asking me about both on my earlier Getaway cruise. Sometime we'll have to sync up on a future cruise! We did have a good Joy-ride back in 2022, even if we maybe gave each other COVID. 🤣 Also, I noticed you're on Cunard soon! Have a great time -- we're planning on trying them for a transatlantic crossing in 2026.

Hello CruiseCritic! We just got off the Joy's Bermuda run, from August 11th-18th. We're a family of 3: my wife and I are both 39, and our daughter is 6. I figured I'd share some thoughts on the experience. Booking We had such a great time on the Joy last year in 2023 going to Bermuda that we decided to do it again. Bermuda is full of happy memories for us; we went there for our 1st Anniversary, and 12 years later, we're still going as often as we can. The Joy is also one of our favorite ships in the NCL fleet. We sailed on her for a 16-day Panama Canal transit in 2020 (yes, 2020) right before the pandemic, and have enjoyed her again several times since then, so this vacation was a bit of a no-brainer. Well, it's usually a no-brainer. This time cost quite a bit more than the last time we went, as prices have increased: we paid about $500 more than we did for this cruise last year. Somewhat to be expected these days, but did the experience live up to the price? Read on! Embarkation We actually spent a few days in New York before the cruise, doing touristy stuff that we somehow had never done (despite being from Philadelphia). We had a blast, but all the museum exploring and Empire State Building climbing sort of meant we were tired when it was time to board the Joy. Luckily, we got aboard with a minimum of hassle. We visited the Intrepid Museum on Embarkation Day, and then just waited until the crowds died down to board the Joy. The later 6 PM departure meant that we had more New York time during the day, but honestly I'd still rather sail at 4 PM. It looks like next year, the Getaway is sailing at 4 PM again, so hooray for a return to earlier sailings and more time aboard ship. Bermuda, Truncated Unfortunately, our trip to Bermuda coincided with both a stalled cold front over the island and the impending arrival of Hurricane Ernesto. Captain Hakan kept us well-informed of the developments with the hurricane. It turned out that our visit would be cut short: we'd arrive on Tuesday evening at 6 PM, and depart on Thursday at 1 PM. It's a hurricane, and you don't mess with hurricanes. I was fine with this, albeit disappointed to miss the time in Bermuda. The weather in Bermuda wasn't as good as normal, but we did get some sunny spots amid the showers, so it wasn't a total loss. We had a good, full beach day on Wednesday, and visited the National Museum of Bermuda on Thursday (which, despite having been to Bermuda 10 other times, we somehow had never been to). I wish we had more time, but we've been there before, and will be there again. It was the right decision to leave early, and we were rewarded with great weather on our last 2 sea days heading back to New York. I expected a bit of a bumpy ride, since a hurricane was in the vicinity, but the seas were as smooth as I've ever seen them on the Atlantic -- they were like glass on Saturday. We spotted a dolphin because we heard it splashing a couple hundred yards away. The Joy Itself The Joy is still a fine ship. We love the Observation Lounge, though the decrease in size is disappointing. The lounge was pretty crowded on Tuesday because it was drizzling, and we could have used that extra space. But I don't think NCL is going to bring it back. One of our favorite parts of the Joy was the Taste of India station on the buffet. We ate there several times, finding it to be some of the best food on the ship. Really? The buffet? The best food on the ship? Read on. Cutbacks We had a good time on this cruise, but the value for money was not as good as in years past. I'll break this down according to sections. Food The food quality has taken a dip, across the board. The MDR dinners we had were good -- if a little salty -- but breakfast was decidedly meh. The breakfast potatoes were mid (as the kids say these days), and old favorites like eggs benedict just weren't as good this time around -- missing little details like the sprinkled parsley. Lunch was OK, but everything just didn't taste quite as good. Even the specialty restaurants (which are still good) are missing menu items and weren't quite as good as in years past. I think they're using lower-quality ingredients to save money. The Indian Buffet, as mentioned earlier, was the best part. The food from those stations was so good. I will caveat this by saying that this was our 18th cruise with NCL, and honestly we've just tried everything at this point, so maybe this is a little bit more of a Me Problem than an NCL Problem. Entertainment NCL has taken a huge step back here. Elements was good, but honestly it's the same as it always has been. Our 6-year old daughter loved it, but for my wife and I, seeing it for the 5th time just didn't have the same impact as it did before. There's also just not that much entertainment in the theater that's worth going to anymore. The Broadway shows are gone, and though I didn't really want to see Footloose again, the 80s musical cabaret was really boring. The comedians were good, but it was hard to get in there, because so many people wanted to see them (since there wasn't much else to see). The Beatles Revolution was great as always. The Beatles can still pack a house 60 years later -- and it's not even the real Beatles. I skipped Wheel of Fortune. It was dreadful on the Getaway this past spring; a bunch of people that didn't even know how to play (had they even seen the show? or maybe they were just too drunk?). Maybe the Joy was better, but honestly, I don't need to see a spinning video wheel and listen to the Cruise Director mistaking volume for enthusiasm. The music acts were still good, though I really missed Howl at the Moon from our Getaway cruise. Onboard Activities My daughter loved the kids club, so that was still good. The lines weren't bad to get in, either -- I think August, despite being a busy season, is better than Spring Break (which was just too crowded for us). We didn't really feel the crowds too much, though the pool deck was packed on sea days. We went to the pools and hot tubs and slides later in the afternoon, when people were tired and getting washed up for dinner, and enjoyed them. The Joy Speedway was great fun -- my daughter and I really enjoyed it. Service Service was excellent overall -- the GM (Rohinton) runs a good operation. Our cabin attendant was one of the best we ever had. He made some truly inspired towel animals for my daughter, which he didn't have to do, especially considering the number of cabins he had to clean. I never had even seen an alligator towel animal, but he nailed it. And we seldom get the monkey anymore, but we got the monkey. He was great. But it's not all great news. I ran into one of the cabin attendants that I had met on a previous cruise, and he said that NCL's penny-pinching has reached the employees. According to him, NCL laid off about half the cabin workers, roughly doubled the amount of cabins that the attendants had to service, and then cut the pay of the remaining attendants. It's only a once-per-day makeup now, sure, but everyone knows that the morning make-up is the one that's the biggest job: the evening turn-down service was usually just a minor touch-up. He said -- and this is coming from him, I'm just passing it on -- that the cabin attendants get very little of the DSC. He said his brother (who worked on Disney) makes way more than he does, but he can't quit because he needs the money, and he's a 19-year veteran on NCL, so going elsewhere would mean starting from scratch. This wasn't great to hear. I was aware that the number of rooms was increased. Heck, I even was aware NCL cut a lot of the attendants to save on headcount. But I wasn't aware that they cut the pay of the existing attendants, and I also had never heard from a NCL employee that the cabin attendant's share of the DSC is minimal. I asked him what we should do -- he said "well, you need a vacation, we all do -- don't feel bad about taking one". I get that, but it's hard to ignore something that's staring me in the face: the cabin attendants are very overworked, even more than before. I gave ours a generous tip. But honestly, with $20/day service charges, it's bothersome that NCL is cutting pay of their employees. This is all hearsay, I know, but it put a damper on my impressions of today's NCL. According to employees I've talked to, it's not the same NCL as it once was. Overall Thoughts We had a good time, but we'll be taking a break from NCL after next year. We've already made plans to go to Bermuda with my in-laws, so we're taking that trip, but after that, I think it's time to try another line. Part of this is just us being a bit bored of NCL's offerings. I've eaten nearly everything on the MDR menus at this point -- it's just time for something new. We'll probably try the Prima class at some point, but we haven't seen many sailings out of NYC, which is the most convenient cruise port for us. We'll be doing HAL for Alaska next summer, and I am super interested to compare and contrast the two lines. NCL's value for money has always been strong, but has taken a sizeable dip as NCL presumably tries to recover from debt run up during the pandemic. I get it, but at the same time, I don't like hearing from NCL employees that they're exhausted. Let me know if you have any questions, etc. Happy to answer.

I'm considering trying MSC, since they've expanded operations from NYC. What's really holding me back on MSC Is the reports of the MDR food being decidedly not-great. Now, granted, NCL's MDR food this cruise was hit-and-miss. How have you found non-specialty dining on MSC?

I completely agree! We had a great time, but most of the highlights were in Bermuda. The Atrium is really heavily used and it’s SO LOUD. It makes it hard to eat at O’Sheehans due to the noise. We asked to be seated towards the back and the hostess brought us to as quiet a spot as she could find, and we shared a few laughs about the noise (it was getting on her nerves too!). I plan to fill out a Dear GM card on the next sailing and see if they’ll let her order the hot dog or chicken fingers. Great advice—thank you!

It was basically identical to the 2023 menus, just with fewer options. Kind of another reason why we want to try a different line: we’ve had about everything off the MDR menu. They found a way! Luckily our daughter liked the pizza but for picky eaters, it’s not a great menu. At least we got two days in Bermuda. I would have been really disappointed. That’s three Getaway sailings in a row that modified their calling times in Bermuda.

@mking8288, I unfortunately wasn't able to get the list of officers, but I can confirm for you that the Getaway is still using the ancient 1996-vintage navigation channel.

We did. Like I said, I was glad to have our balcony cabin to read in. We missed the Observation Lounge—that was always a great reading spot.

Hello CruiseCritic! We just got off the Getaway's 7-day sailing from New York to Bermuda, so I figured I'd post a brief review with my thoughts. We're a family of 3: my wife and I are both 39, and our daughter is 6. Booking We are from Philly, so we've done a ton of cruises out of New York to Bermuda. Our first was on the Star in August of 2012, celebrating our first anniversary. We had cruised aboard the Epic for our honeymoon and loved it, and wanted to do another cruise, so we booked a last-minute inside cabin to Bermuda and had an absolute blast. We've been cruising to Bermuda ever since -- and so far, only with NCL. Even though we're seasoned Bermuda veterans, we've only ever been there between May and October. Late March was a solid month before our earliest trip there, and we knew going in that it wouldn't be as warm as our normal summer trips, especially the water temperature. Our first inclination was to go to the Caribbean instead of Bermuda; we're already booked for a Bermuda cruise on the Joy later this year, and the Caribbean would be warmer. But there were no sailings to the Caribbean out of NYC in mid to late March, and prices out of Florida were sky-high. If we wanted to cruise NCL, Bermuda was our only viable option. We initially booked an inside guarantee, and put in a $200 per-person bid to a balcony, which was accepted 6 days before the cruise -- yay! Delayed Departure and Embarkation Two sailings prior to our cruise, the Getaway had some "mechanical" issues, and was late getting into New York after coming up from the Caribbean. We watched the sailing just prior to ours with great interest, to see whether the mechanical issues would continue to plague the ship. It didn't appear that they did, but the ship was late getting back into New York due to rough seas. We got messages the night before the cruise telling us that the ship wouldn't arrive until noon on Sunday, and that we shouldn't arrive at the pier until 3 or 4 PM on embarkation day. We were driving to New York anyway, so no biggie -- we simply delayed our departure for New York until 2:30 PM, and got to to the terminal at 4:30 PM, securing one of the last parking spots on the pier -- whew! It turns out that many people showed up well before 3 PM, and the parking at the pier very nearly filled up. The flip side of this is that we cruised right through embarkation. There was basically no line, and we were through embarkation and on the ship with no waiting -- it took a half-hour at most. That was great, but we did miss a solid 5 hours of our embarkation day -- that was a disappointment, since that time onboard prior to sailing is always so full of excitement. I missed that. But hey, we're still on vacation,so let's go! Delayed Arrival to Bermuda Unfortunately, Mother Nature decided to continue to throw monkey wrenches our way. We got the announcement on Monday that our arrival to Bermuda would be delayed 1 day, until Wednesday. Our original itinerary had us in port from 8 AM on Tuesday until 7 AM on Friday, which is a lot of time in Bermuda -- and we were really looking forward to that. We had two rough sea days. Many people were sea-sick. We were packing Bonine, ginger candies, and sea bands. They helped stave off nausea, but they don't do anything about the ship lurching about. It made it harder to sleep and walk around. Then, when we got to Bermuda, we got word that we'd be leaving on Thursday evening instead of Friday morning -- a further reduction to our time on the island. They gave us $200 OBC ($100 for the late arrival, $100 for the early departure). This is much-appreciated, but it's a real bummer that you can only use non-refundable OBC for items that are marked up. I would have loved to have used the OBC to buy a CruiseNext certificate, but that is no longer permitted. Bermuda Bermuda itself was absolutely lovely. The weather was a balmy 72°F, and the water temperature was a chilly 68°F, but we still visited the beaches and my daughter played in the wet sand. The island is just a wonderful, wonderful place. We'd come back in March -- but honestly, I don't think we'd cruise there again in March. It's just too much of a gamble with the weather on the way down: the past couple sailings and the current sailing were also affected by weather. It does raise the question why NCL isn't offering better itineraries out of NYC for Spring Break. On the Cutbacks OK, so everyone on CruiseCritic was talking about cutbacks, to the point where I started actively avoiding the boards so that I wouldn't poison my own opinion of the cruise before we even set sail. What's the verdict? Well, there have been cutbacks for sure, mostly around food and entertainment. I'll go into both. Food We noticed a decline in MDR food quality, as well as the number of options available on the menu. The right side of the menu has been reduced from 6 or 7 entrees in 2023 to 5, and the left side lost an entree as well. There's now a big section of the menu devoted to food you can order from Cagneys. Want lobster in the MDR? Well good news for you -- you can get it! Bad news is that it's an upsell. And that big section of food you can order from Cagneys conveniently means they don't have as much space to put regular entrees there. As for the food itself, it was OK, but it wasn't great. We have always been fine with the MDR options, but this time I think I would have been really disappointed if I didn't have a couple Latitudes vouchers for specialty meals. Hard to put my finger on exactly what was wrong. The ingredients seemed lower quality. The MDR food just was bland in general. The buffet fared a little better, but certain things I enjoyed for breakfast were gone. Everyone will complain about the hashbrowns being gone, but the country potatoes were just not good this time around. They're soggy and disappointing. The old ones were crispier and just better. The specialty restaurants, on the other hand, were still as good as ever. We dined in Ocean Blue, Moderno, and Le Bistro, and enjoyed them all. I will point out, though, that the mascarpone & caramelized onion bread in Ocean Blue is gone...gone...which was cause for much sadness for both me and my wife, who absolutely loved that bread. Food quality otherwise in the specialties was every bit up to par. O'Sheehans has only ever been average food, but sometimes you just want a nonfancy burger, and it certainly still fits the bill. I don't think food quality has declined here, but there do appear to be somewhat fewer options than before. The kids menu changed. They eliminated the chicken tenders, hot dog, chicken noodle soup. They added roasted tomato soup, a veggie taco, and a chicken stir fry. My daughter is still in the Only Wants Chicken Nuggets, Hot Dogs, and Kraft Mac 'n Cheese stage (though she's slowly getting better), so this was a bit of a blow. Though we were sort of happy to not let her eat hot dogs all week. At least the pizza is still there. Entertainment OK, so somehow I made it through almost 20 NCL cruises without having seen Howl at the Moon, and damn have I been missing out!!! They were so good. I saw the final show, came in at the start, and wound up staying the entire time until 1 AM. Absolutely brilliant. Not to be missed if you love music. The comedians were fun; I don't think Levity overall is as good as Second City used to be, but still really solid, and I enjoyed seeing them for a couple shows. Out of morbid curiosity, I went to see Wheel of Fortune, and it was absolutely dreadful. It's sort of a travesty that it's considered prime-time entertainment on a ship of this size. It was basically the cruise director shouting into the mic, and a virtual on-screen wheel. Come on, NCL, you couldn't even come up with a real wheel to spin? The contestents had obviously never seen the show nor had they ever studied letter frequency in the English language. RLSTNE, anyone? One of them even solved the puzzle without spinning the wheel, which would have been impressive if she didn't just lock in a $0 winning. Thankfully it was over in about 30 minutes. Woof. Onboard Activities Something I learned this cruise -- the Getaway is a much better warm-weather ship than cold weather. We are so, so lucky that we upgraded to a balcony, because at least we could watch the sea on the sea days, while we read books and popped Bonine. If we had stayed in our inside cabin, I don't know what we would have done. When the weather's not good, there's not a whole lot to do on the ship during the day that doesn't involve purchasing spa treatments, art, or bingo cards. My daughter went to the kids club once, and enjoyed it, but the lines to get in were so long that we didn't really bother trying to drop her off there. Spring Break, after all. Service Service was fine. Not as good as we had in the past, but honestly, it's Spring Break and I think the crew was sort of just trying to get through it all. I get it. One MDR waiter had us cracking up laughing about all the stumbling around that the crew had been doing due to the rough seas. They were over it by the time we were onboard. Multiple crew members said to me that they couldn't wait to get back to the Caribbean, since the back and forth to Bermuda had been so brutal. Our cabin attendant was great. I miss the days where there were more cabin attendants and staterooms were usually done by 11 AM or lunchtime at the latest. 4 PM cabin makeup is a bit of a drag -- and that's on NCL, not the attendants. I said before and I'll say again that the cabin attendant is the most visible member of the crew for almost everyone onboard. If they're overworked, people will notice. I noticed. Overall Thoughts We had a good time. It wasn't the best cruise we ever took, being honest. The days in Bermuda were by far the best part -- it sort of reminded us "this is why we're here". I think we'll skip winter / very early spring sailings to Bermuda from here on out, though. The weather out of NYC is too much of a gamble. Granted, even Florida had their issues that same week, but you have to go with the best possible option. After nearly 20 cruises, I'm sort of feeling like I've been-there-done-that with NCL, and the prices have gone up significantly. In fact, the rate for the third person in the room was higher than the first and second person -- which was something I never saw before! We've got an August cruise on the Joy coming up (to Bermuda...booked last summer). I could cancel it, but I think I'll keep it. We love Bermuda, and missed snorkeling and swimming while we were there, and it felt good as we sailed away from the island to know we'd be coming back in a few short months. But I think after this, we'll take a break from NCL and try some other lines: perhaps Celebrity or HAL. Let me know if you have any questions, etc. Happy to answer.

That makes sense. I always follow Bermuda's Weather Service (https://www.weather.bm)—they have the most accurate predictions. They are not forecasting anything that looks too drastic, but it's still a few days out.

The weather for the trip down to Bermuda tomorrow looks fine on Windy, and the National Weather Service is also calling for 4 foot seas tomorrow. We pulled into our berth at Pier 88 at 4 AM this morning, so ahead of schedule. If Getaway can’t get to Bermuda by Tuesday, I’d suspect some sort of propulsion issue as well. Conditions are near-ideal for tomorrow.

Windy is showing sea conditions tomorrow that are considerably better than anything we got (aside from the last sea day, yesterday). If Getaway is delayed getting to Bermuda again, then I’m suspecting that she’s still having mechanical issues. We had to depart Thursday evening from Bermuda, faced a really rocky Friday morning, and then had calm seas from late Friday until we arrived today. I’m really not sure why they didn’t just have us leave Bermuda on Friday afternoon—unless, of course, she is unable to make or sustain her top speed.

It’s still on the Getaway. After countless cruises that had it, I finally got around to checking it out last night (I’m onboard now) and I’m kicking myself for not going sooner. It was so good.

Just noticed that as well on the ferry to St. George! And another update: not only are we not staying a bit later, we are leaving early. The captain announced that we are sailing Thursday at 6 PM to avoid worsening weather conditions on the way back to New York. This seems a bit dodgy to me—Windy shows poor sea conditions on Friday that seem to get better on Saturday. I’m wondering whether they are covering for propulsion issues. They’ve issued us another $100 of OBC, but I’m less than thrilled. I’ll write up thoughts when we get home, but we have definitely seen evidence of cutbacks. The food has been decidedly lower quality than in the past, and the entertainment hasn’t been great. We’re booked for August on the Joy, and leaning towards keeping our reservation, but this trip has been somewhat disappointing. Some of that is due to weather, which is beyond the control of NCL, but the product has suffered a bit. Not as dramatically as I’ve heard on here, but enough to notice.

We actually did well. We arrived at 4:30 PM and got right on the boat—minimal wait times in the Terminal. Seems that many people got there well before the 3 PM start time for embarkation. We got one of the last parking spots on the pier. Whew! As suspected, the captain hugged the coastline to minimize the rough ride, at the expense of 1 day in Bermuda—we are arriving now, as opposed to yesterday’s originally-scheduled arrival. Unfortunately, our departure time from Bermuda has not been modified from the originally-scheduled 7 AM Friday. I thought it would be moved back to 2 PM like the previous cruise, since weather on the way back should be fine. But…no. We got $100 OBC as compensation but I’d much rather have an extra half-day in Bermuda. I wonder whether Getaway is still speed-restricted. The ride down was pretty rough all the way until yesterday afternoon. Not much that could be done about that though. Looking like good weather for today and tomorrow in Bermuda, and for that I am grateful!

We’re still expecting a little chaos. Did you check bags for your delayed embarkation? When did they get to your stateroom? Was there indeed a bag check in the casino? Trying to figure out whether we should carry on or not—we’re not sure if we’ll have our bags by bedtime.

Thanks @mking8288! We’re going to be driving up from Philly at around 2:30 PM today, targeting an arrival between 4 and 5 PM. I figure the terminal at 3 PM will be mobbed, so better to skip the initial rush. Looks like we’ll have a nighttime sail away from New York—should be lovely! Probably a bumpy ride tomorrow, but we’re prepared with Bonine, sea bands, ginger candies, and past experience. Weather for Bermuda looks nice too! I wouldn’t be surprised to see us arrive late Tuesday or even Wednesday.

We just got the notification. NCL is asking for us to arrive between 3 and 6 PM. Shouldn’t be a big deal. Safe travels.

We bid fairly aggressively for a balcony—$200 per person bid from an inside, so into the Fair range. We still were quite a bit below what balconies were selling for outright, and I had been doing mock bookings to check availability so I knew there were some available. We got upgraded 3 days ago, so 6 days prior to departure. My daughter is in school now, so we're stuck on the school schedule—so forget about price drops closer to sail date. Now the prices seem to go up as we approach the sail date. Back before she was school, we'd book last-minute and get some great deals, but that's sort of a thing of the past now. This time, they actually charged more for the third person in the room than persons 1 and 2! I was floored. I feel your pain with the M&Gs—if they happen at all, they've been taken over by That Other Platform. I used to go, but haven't been bothering recently. The CC boards have gotten much quieter, as Zuckerberg & Co. coalesce so much of the online community into their own walled garden. And what remains of CC has gotten so negative that I have largely stayed away, to avoid poisoning my opinions of the cruise before we even set sail. Back to the weather—yes, I wouldn't be surprised if they held us in NY or had us hug the coastline a bit, with a later arrival in Bermuda. They might wind up just putting us on the same itinerary that's usually used for Bermuda: 8 AM arrival on Wednesday, in port Thursday, depart Friday at 3 PM. We'll see what happens. Either way, no cooking or cleaning to do for the week—so that's already a win. It would be great to catch up on another cruise one of these days.

Henry, it's a little reminiscent of the cruise we were on to Bermuda—though that was in May. Wave heights were around 28 feet, and I was definitely feeling a little green around the gills. We're packing Bonine, sea bands, ginger candies—the works. And I'll definitely hit up the buffet for green apples. We hit the Upgrade Advantage lottery and got moved from an inside to a balcony—with the bad weather for the first day or two of the trip, that was probably a good move, since I'll be able to watch the horizon to settle the old inner ear. Bermuda Weather Service is saying to expect strong, gale-force winds Sunday, and continued strong winds on Monday, easing toward the end of the day. We are due to get in Tuesday, so I'm thinking we'll be in for a rough ride on Monday, but after that we should be pretty good. Once we're in Bermuda, it might be a bit breezy, but temperatures should be fairly agreeable—68-70°F. Of course, that's going by my phone's weather app; the most trustworthy source is weather.bm, but they don't predict more than 5 days out (and for good reason).

We’ll be on our way to Bermuda in a few days’ time, once the Getaway comes back for us. Looking at the forecast, they’re calling for a “breezy” Sunday, so I’m thinking we might be rocking and rolling a bit too on our way down. Windy is calling for 22 foot waves on Monday, so we’ll be packing the Bonine. Hopefully Bermuda will greet us with sunny skies and temps in the high 60s!

She's heading for Bermuda at 20 knots right now, so she seems to be making expected speed for a Wednesday arrival.

I figured there was no way she’d make her originally-scheduled arrival. I’m curious how long she’ll remain docked in New York, and what time on Friday she’ll leave Bermuda.