St Thomas - day 4

Yesterday we made plans with Brian, Lynn's brother, on where we would meet him. Not an easy task as there are 5 cruise ships in port plus a US aircraft carrier with 4500 sailors on R&R. The ports are busy, the roads more so. As we approach we learn that Princess has encountered another itinerary change. There are 2 ports in St Thomas.  We are now assinged to the other one. After a few text messages a new meeting place is established. Actually to our benefit as we now are at least 30 minutes closer to where Brian and Noel are staying.

The ship is cleared and we are off for the day. The Marriot time share is very nice, but we are unable to get lunch there today. We drive to the nearby Westin resort. The main dining area only has seating in full sun. We decline and instead go to a restaurant near the beach. We were told they serve Hamburgs, just what we were looking for. Parking is scarce and the roads very rough and narrow. Forget the fact that they drive on the left side here. We are taken to the beach location in a golf cart.

Looking at the menu, everything is seafood. Neither Brian nor I can eat it.  We explain to our waitress the we were told they served burgers, chicken etc here. She talked to the chef. Of course he would fix us whatever we wanted.

Lunch was good and we had a nice view of the anchored G W Ford, aircraft carrier. Our nice visit must conclude. We are back to the ship in plenty of time to clean up for dinner.

Yes dinner. As I mentioned earlier there are 21 in our group, including our travel agent. An obscure fact that no one would pass on to us was the fact that when you book as a group with Princess the only dining option you have in 7:30 fixed dining time. No other option is allowed. I say allowed because until a few weeks before sailing Princess wouldn't share that detail with anyone, instead a day or two after someone would make a different dining reservation it would just get cancelled. It was only after many phone calls by the TA did someone at Princess share this little detail. Is it a big deal no, but the way it wasn't handled was very poor.

Service in the dining room is as you would expect with a table of 10 and 11 which includes 4 children. Even made more difficult as half of us switch tables each night to mix up the company. The staff manages to get us served in time to make the  show each night. So far they have been good.

The weather remains excellent. Tonight we head to St. Marten.

2 Sea Days

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.