The seas remain slight, the skies mostly sunny. We are finally underway. Fortunately we have 2 days to make up for the late departure. That will not be a problem, we are cruising at 20 knots, well below our top speed.
We learn more about the delays on boarding day. The ship having spent the summer in Europe had to undergo an extensive Coast Guard inspection, the ship passed without a single citation.
Every crew member had to have a face to face interview with US CBP agents. Passports, visas and seamans logs had to be checked. A time consuming process.
Both of these steps have to be completed before passengers or provision loading can commence.
Having just completed a 16 day crossing, more than the usual amount of provisions had to be loaded. Usually the ship loads 300,000 pounds of provisions. Sunday they loaded 430,000 pounds plus dozens of pallets of Christmas decorations. Just to make it more difficult, some pallets with assembled and decorated trees would not fit through the loading door and had to be taken apart and handled as tree parts instead of trees. The description was "all the parts were just thrown in the hold"
The biggest culprit to slow loading - the fact that luggage was supposed to be presorted on shore so that each cart load would go to a specific area of the ship. Somehow the message was lost and luggage was not sorted causing a big delay when each cart of luggage had to be sorted on the ship.
As we move south easterly through the Caribbean we can see several other cruise ships headed in the same direction. During the night there was a rocket launch, the recovered booster sits on itś recovery barge, headed back to Canaveral for another launch.
The weather is excellent, typical caribbean weather with mostly sunny skies and temperatures in the 70's. The pool is crowded as expected. Some passengers should know better, but get too much sun anyway.
The ship is clean and in good repair. The shower arrangement is one of the better ones I have encountered, but the bathroom overall one of the smallest. The balcony is also one of the smallest. No chocolates on your pillow and so far no towel animals. But they did have a towel folding demonstration by several of the crew members. One cabin steward was the best I have ever seen. He was able to incorporate detail unequaled by his peers. Maybe his 24 years of experience was a factor.
The seas have remained under 2 meters so far. You can feel no motion to the ship.
Our first port of call will be St Thomas. We make plans to meet up with Lynn's brother from Wisconsin that is here for a week.
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