22 March 2015

It’s time to say farewell to Tavernier, FL. Mangrove Marina has been our home for the last 104 days, and it’s been wonderful. We are on the 300 dock, “Caicos” with 14 other “live-aboard” and another 6-8 transients.

We got here by a fluke. I had waited too long to get us a slip in Marathon and was able to snag a slip here. It’s turned out well, there is almost everything we need within bike or walking distance. There are on the dock pump-outs, so we’ve not needed to move the boat since we got here.

But it’s not the facilities or location that makes this great, it’s all the truly wonderful people that live here. Every night there is someone at docktails, lots of times it’s a mix of people that live here and ones that used to live here. We’ve shared drinks, snacks, great smoked meats, 100′s of rounds of the game cornhole, potluck dinners, a chili contest, catching lobsters from the dock, and have been serenaded by the only marching conch band in the Keys most evenings. Susan’s been a member since January.

Granted, we’ve been gone about 35 of the days the boat was docked, but there was always something going on for the other 60. And that has made it a lot of fun. It’s cool to watch the Superbowl outside wearing shorts. Lots of great sunrises and sunsets. Mom and a juvenile manatee gliding around the boats. Funny stories, bad puns and lots of tall tales.

I missed my three month estimate on how long we would be here by two weeks. I’d love to stay longer, but if we did, I wouldn’t want to leave. We have a grand-baby that’s growing up too fast. So we are off on Monday and start the 1200 mile trip home. You should start seeing a return to almost daily blog posts.

Speaking of posts, Susan has spent the last few days working on videos and pictures, so there should be new things to watch.

Farewell our friends in Tavernier, thanks for making our stay so great! Everytime I see a rainbow I’ll think of all of you.

9 March 2015

One of the things I try to do any place we go is get a behind the scenes tour. I’m fascinated with the logistics on how things happen.

Cruise boats are huge floating hotels. So on top of all of the guest needs of food and lodging, the boat needs to move everyone around. I think the most interesting aspect is the need to be self contained. 2,200 guests and 900 crew on the Nieuw Amsterdam go through a lot of food and drink, create tons of waste and use Megawatts of electricity.

I was able to get into the behind the scenes tour, there were only four of us in our group. The tour was across two days. The bridge and engineering operations is restricted to crew only while underway. So we did those two parts on Day 5, while we were in port on St. Thomas.

The Nieuw Amsterdam is a Class S boat, it’s pretty much all electric. There are 7 diesel powered generators that can be brought on and off-line as needed. With almost everything being electric from the main drive engines to all of the room HVAC it’s a sensible way to try to do power management. The generators are different sizes so they do a mix and match so they are generating what they need.

I found it interesting that they use commercial voltages (11K, 7.2K, 600, 220, 115) volts in their systems. This allows them to use COTS systems vs more expensive marine specific systems.

The first day was an in-port day. They don’t allow non-bridge or non-engineering people in restricted spaces while the ship is moving. Our first stop was the primary engineering control room.

There is a center C shaped console that has about 8 computer screens. It faces a schematic of all the boat systems with standard gauges and indicator lights. Systems are controlled via the computer systems. The displays and applications run on WindowsXP systems (boat was designed in 2005) and communicate on a closed, redundant ethernet network.

There are video cameras all over the mechanical spaces so they can check on what is going on. So we got a tour of the mechanical systems without leaving the control room. They were working on one of the Diesel engines, we were able to see the workmen removing one of the broken studs.

Since the ship is in constant use, they take systems off line on a regular basis to do maintenance. For example pretty much there is one motor / generator system down at any one time. The ship goes into drydock for a month every two years, that is when the underwater equipment is overhauled.

Next stop was the bridge. The Captain was out at a dental appointment, so the Staff Captain (second Captain) gave our tour. The bridge is on the 8th deck above water (ship is 11 decks total) so it has a pretty good view of what is going on. There are some blind spots, there are cameras to give a view and while docking they are manned by crew on radios.

On each side of the bridge are wings that stick out about 20′. In the wing floor is a glass section that lets the pilot look down at the dock. With the 360 degree propellers and the bow thrusters the ship can actually move sideways into position. To dock they line up with marks on the pier. They then move into the dock until the mark is directly below the wing floor window. This lets them know that the ship is in the exact position (+/- 1 meter).

The propeller controls are fancy joysticks that let them position each one independently of the other. There is a GPS system that is attached so they can “hover” in position. They use this system at places like Half Moon Cay rather than trying to anchor. When the boat is underway and the drive pods are synchronized together, there is a small wheel at the center of the bridge that the helmsman uses to steer the boat.

Both wings have the same set of controls so docking from either side is possible. They both also have full radio systems to talk to the teams that are taking care of the lines. As do smaller boats they use a set of fore and aft lines (3-4 each) and fore and aft spring lines (2) to keep them on the dock.

Moving across the bridge the next station is a full communications station with HF, VHF and satphone coverage. There is also a telex machine that isn’t used (it’s there as a backup) since written communications come in via email.

Next is the GPS position setup. There are receivers on both ends of the boat so they know exactly where the boat is. The positioning systems are fully redundant. This area also does the AIS tracking and has the ability to overlay the ships radar information.

A little farther on is the ships wheel and the primary course plotter. They have a number of different modes they can use. The helmsman can drive the boat of course, but they mostly use the autopilot. One autopilot mode is similar to what I have on the Quo Vadimus, it will steer a set heading. They have one that will follow either a plotted course (making all the turns) or their favorite just follow the course we actually did last time.

Past the ships wheel is what would have been the paper chart station. The surface has been replaced by a 51″ touch screen monitor. From this location they can pull up the course, any engineering info, weather, etc.

Along the wall at this location is a series of high stools, one of them is marked with the Captain stripes. This is where the bridge officers sit when they are on the bridge. Next to the stools is a old style engine control (big brass stand with two levers that move in a circle) as an homage to “the way it used to be done”.

The last station is an engineering station that is used to monitor for leaks, but to also move water around to adjust the trim of the ship. For example if there is wind pushing on the port side causing the ship to list to starboard, they can move water to the port side tanks to stand the boat back up.

We are now at the starboard side wing having walked the width of the ship.

Aft of the helm is a room that has all of the fire control / water tight door system management. This is a combination of indicator lights in a schematic diagram of the ship and computer monitors.

Behind the fire control is the Captains office and quarters, so he is just steps away from the bridge if something happens.

Stay tuned for parts two and three!

8 March 2015

We docked in Ft Lauderdale and our “vacation from our vacation” is over. In two weeks we traveled 4033 miles, 375 miles more than we’ve done on the loop.

Ft Lauderdale → Half Moon Cay – 275 miles at 18 kts
Half Moon Cay → Grand Turk – 332 miles at 19.2 kts
Grand Turk → San Juan – 354 miles at 18.2 kts
San Juan → St. Thomas – 72 miles at 9.7 kts
St. Thomas → Ft Lauderdale – 975 miles at 15.9 kts
Week 2
Ft. Lauderdale → Half Moon Cay – 275 miles at 18 kts
Half Moon Cay → Grand Cayman – 728 miles at 18.5 kts
Grand Cayman → Costa Maya – 360 miles at 19.7 kts
Costa Maya –> Key West – 483 miles at 13.3 kts
Key West → Ft Lauderdale – 179 miles at 16.7 kts

Grand total 4033 miles. 6 of the 14 days the winds were 20+ knots, one day it was 25kts with gusts to 35. Happy to be on a much bigger boat! I’m also happy I’m not paying the fuel bill, they average 85 gallons per mile (that’s 0.012 MPG we get 1.2 miles to the gallon, a big difference). Burn was about 343,000 gallons or about $1.1 million for the trip. The Quo Vadimus could make it around the world 9 times on that amount of fuel.

We took a shuttle to the airport and then picked up the Keys Shuttle bus and about 3PM we were back on our boat. Super happy about how much fun the trip is, but we both face a mound of laundry to do. We are both pretty tired, it’s hard to do all that touring around.

We will rest up the next two weeks and then head out around the 21st.

7 March 2015

We had been to Key West the first week in Jauary with Dave and Mike. We had done the whirl-wind tour. We missed some of the sites so we’ll try to pick them back up.

It’s a short day, we dock at 8, need to deal with US Customs to get off the boat, so I expect that it won’t be a fun morning. Need to be back on the boat by 4:30, so that makes it a short day ashore.

Once we get into cell range it will be time to use our hotspot. Internet on the boat is $0.79 a minute rounded up to the next nearest clock minute. So start at 11:52:55 and go to 11:54:10 seconds and that is 3 minutes. Super expensive, so waiting for the hotspot to start working makes sense.

After clearing a backlog of mail away we are all set for the day.

It was a surprise getting through US Customs, they just glanced at our passports, all in all about a 2 minute wait.

First stop was to get onto the Conch train for a ride through Key West. It is an off and on tour, but the time to the first stop is about 45 mins an you end up about two blocks away from where you started. But we did get a good tour and were able to figure out where we wanted to go.

It was a good move that we got pictures at the southern most point of the US when we were here with Mike and Dave. Today it’s blocked off for some event.

Town is pretty empty today, since there is only one ship in town. So that makes moving around a lot easier.

We took the Conch Train back down Duvall street to the Hemingway house. It was a pretty interesting tour. The cats (55) on the property all have an extra toe, it makes for fat little paws. We posed First Mate Pig with one. The cat turned and sniffed Pig and he must of said something because the cat smacked him in the head. I rescued him and we continued on.

Back on the Train and up to a marina and the Keys Train Museum. A pretty good exhibit on how the east coast of Florida got started back in the 1880′s. A rail line was built from Atlanta along the coast and ton of hotels were built. That’s how Palm Beach became the place where the rich would go for the summer.

In 1900 a line was built to go the entire length of the keys and brought tourists to Key West. It was the fastest and cheapest way to get from the north to Key West until 1935 when a 24 mile section was wiped out at Islamorada. The railway served as the basis for Rt 1 to be built across the next few years.

Lunch was at the Turtle Kraals. We had conch fritters, they were pretty good.

From lunch we visited the Turtle Museum that showed what was the huge turtle meat industry back in the late 1890′s to 1920′s. In that time period they were pretty much able to destroy the turtle population within 150 miles of Key West. (70 500 (sq miles) is
45,120,000 acres) a lot of turtles.

Next door is the Dry Tortugas Visitors Center. Almost 70 miles west of Key West lies the remote Dry Tortugas National Park. The 100-square mile park is mostly open water with seven small islands. There is a fort on the island that held prisoners during the US civil war. It’s an all day tour to get out there. Maybe someday, but it’s not on my current bucket list.

We then wandered around the tourist area checking out Sloppy Joe’s bar (full of spring break kids), World of Beer (two great shirts and two six packs of beer) a shell place where Susan got an Alto Conch Shell to play.

Susan headed back to the boat to get to her movie while I checked out some more of the stores. I came across an adult gift store that had an entire “50 Shades” section. Next door was The Rum Bar, a bar started by Pat Croce of Philadelphia fame. The place is loaded with Philly sports stuff. It was almost time to get back on the boat so I didn’t have time to get a cheesesteak.

(It turns out that we had drinks or ate at a number of places he owns:Turtle Kraal, Green Parrot, Island Dogs and The Rum Bar.)

I got on the boat in time. A big daily event in Key West is the Sunset Celebration on the square the boat is docked at. So I guess the boat would block the view.

Dinner was at the pop up italian place on the Lido deck. We had the zuppa di pesci, eggplant caponata, sea bass, rigatoni with sausage and gelato. Another great meal, it was a nice way to end the trip.

We passed on the shows and just went back to the room to pack so we could get off the boat.

Tonights towel animal was a small gorilla and I got to help make it.

Sunday we are back on the Quo Vadimus!

6 March 2015

The day started off with a phone call from the front desk. The Captain had gotten my suggestion to go to Key West Friday night. He said it’s not possible to stay overnight at the Key West Cruise Port. The cruise ships block the sunset for the residents. A very interesting answer.

I spent most of the morning reading in the Crow’s nest. I’ve read 6 books so far and I’m about 1/2 way through the current one, I should have it done tonight. Without the constant siren song of the internet I actually have the ability to concentrate.

At noon there was an Ice Sculpture demo up on the Lido deck by the pool. They start with a 4′x2′x3′ block of clear ice.

The sculptor starts with a short handled hoe and removes big chunks of ice. He works very fast. Once he has it roughed out then he uses smaller axes, chisels, and saws. It took him under 10 minutes to create a very nice swan. The final step is to rinse it with water to do the final smoothing of the edges.

I had wondered what happens when some nog the ice comes off when it’s not supposed to. He just puts it back in position and pushes hard on it for about 15 seconds. That refreezes the piece in place. Science in action!

Next stop was the cooking demo, he made stuffed chicken breast and a lobster soup. The demo was pretty good, there wasn’t anything hard about either dish. The ship has copies of the recipe available for u to take home. They also brought out small samples of the chicken dish to try, it was very good.

I also learned about the soup kettles with the spouts we had seen at “The Pinnacle” . They put the soup in them before service starts. As they need them they throw them onto a burner to heat. Since the kettle is heavy metal it heats fast and keeps the heat. That’s how they are able to deliver boiling soup at the table.

A quick ride to the top of the boat to the Crow’s Nest to see a towel folding demo. Two of the staff made a number of the animals that are cruise line staples. There are four different standard bodies that they start with. All of the animals can be made with any size towel. They make the animals in under a minute, if they take any longer the they fall behind on the rooms. Each steward is responsible for about 15 rooms worth of animals.

Two nights ago Island Magic musicians performed their steel pan show of “Show Tunes to Classical Music. Today they did a show of Caribbean classics with some contemporary songs (Wonderful World, some Beatles songs, etc.) The audience sang along to John Denver’s “Country Road” and they closed with Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane”. I liked the show, but it clearly plays to a older crowd.

Today is another formal night, so I put on my formal polo shirt and we headed to the the Pinnacle Bar for their “sample and savor” option. Tonight was a really nice Pino noir from Australia. The savor snack were crab cake appetizers. They had been rolled in panko crumbs before cooking.

Dinner was at Tamarind the Asian Fusion Restaurant at the top of the ship. We had a great window looking southwest for the sunset. There were a few clouds so it wasn’t as great as it could have been.

The diner silver was very elegant. All of the handles were about 8″ long. They also had metal chopsticks with grooves at the food end to make it easier to pick food up.

The menu is huge, three soups, 6 appetizers, about 18 different rolls to start. The main section of the menu is broken down into 4 groups: Fire – spicy dishes, Wood – dishes from the land, Water – fish and sea food and Metal – dishes with special cooking methods.

Susan started with a special wonton soup. They were bigger than normal and had different fillings. She liked the miso broth they were served in.

Mine was two giant prawns, that had the heads removed and cooked in a tempura batter. It came with a salad that had ginger and lime as the dressing. It was very bright and refreshing. Sorry about the picture of just the tails, I got carried away.

Next for Susan was potstickers three ways, pork, lobster and duck. I think they were good, she didn’t offer to share. I had braised beef short ribs in 5 spice powder sauce. Loved it, would eat that again given a chance.

Susan chose from Wood, she had a wasabi encrusted filet with onion rings and rice. The wasabi added a lot of flavor, but after a few bites it became pretty hot.

I had scallops and shrimp, but rather than being on a plate they were served in a broth with some bok choy. The broth had a very light fish flavor and a touch of ginger. It was a great paring to the delicate flavors of the scallop and shrimp. When the waitress explained the disk I though at worst it could be a seafood soup. With the huge scallops and shrimp it was much more.

Dessert was a chocolate mousse with a hint of tamarind flavor in a chocolate shell. Susan has three flavors of sorbet, one was wasabi. It was very different.

From Tamarind we split up, Susan went to the theater to get us seats for “Garageband”. I went to the main dining room to see if I could get a piece of the rhubarb tart to go. Yep! Covered in plastic!! and with silver!!!

Swing by the room, drop off the tart, refill Susan’s wine and on the way by the sports bar order a drink for me. Drop off Susan’s wine, and nook at the theater, remember that I needed something in the cabin, walk back, pick it up, go past the bar, grab my now made drink and slide into my seat with 90 seconds to go. So it’s taken me 12 days to get the full layout of the ship in my brain, but I know have the shortest routes memorized.

Tonights show was “Garageband” by the ships talent. It was pretty good, 60′s, 70′s and 80′ car music (lots and lots of Beach Boy songs). It was fun, lots of action, songs, dancing. A huge overload of props, I can see why the cast talks about all the storage being full of “Garageband” stuff.

The show was packed, it was good that Susan got down early to get seats.

Tonight’s towel is a swan. It’s very elegant propped up by the pillows.

5 March 2015

We started off the day with breakfast in the main dining room. It was a nice bright morning and we got a nice window seat.

After breakfast I went up to the crows nest to work on these blog posts. About 9:30 the members of Island Magic the steel pan show from last night. They did an hour long Q&A session. The most amazing thing is none of the four (or the three that proceeded them) can read music, they all do it from listening to the original music and memorizing the notes.

We were prepping for our day in Mexico the Captain announced that due to the wind (30 kts) and waves (2-3 meters / 6 – 8 feet) they would not be able to dock. The boat would be broadside to the wind and waves. While they would be able to dock, it would be hard to get the ship smoothly off the dock (I guess you can’t just rev up a cruise-liner). I suggested that they just move on to Key West, putting us there Friday afternoon, but the cruise line decided the casino profits were more important than us seeing a Key West sunset. Go figure.

We had a nice lunch in the main dining area. Susan when with the grilled Mahi Mahi sandwich. I had a shrimp quesodea and a trio of different smoked salmon. The salmon came with horseradish, a pretty interesting taste combination.

After lunch we played team trivia, where we lost and pictionary that we won at.

The rest of the afternoon was lost to reading and napping. Since the Captain has about 36 hours to go to Key West our average speed is 10 kts. The Quo Vadimus could do that, the only problem is the big waves.

By 5PM the waves have dropped and the water is flat. We joined two other people for Food Trivia. We won, our missing answers had to do with “What fat is good fat” and name the candy that was named for a 1900′s race horse (Lollypop). All the real cooking questions we nailed.

We also talked some about the boat food. We were all in agreement that the pop up Italian place is the best food on the boat.

Dinner was Les Halles French Onion soup for Susan and Chile Relanoes for me for the appetizers and “Rare English Roast Beef and Pudding” for our mains. The beef was good, but not quite as good as the Queens Pub in Toronto, billed as “Proper roast Sunday dinner.

After dinner Susan went to a movie and I went up to the Lido deck to read. Because of the revised times, the evening show was on the Lido deck, it’s the piano player from the lounge. He is a cruise ship regular, lots of the audience are regular listeners of his act in the piano bar.

He does old standards like “American Pie”, “Crocodile Rock”, “What a Wonderful World”, etc. The only drawback is I was seated near the bar, and of course bar people never shut up. I’ll never figure out why they have a need to chatter like monkeys when there is a concert going on.

Tonights towel creation is a small koala.

4 March 2015

At 8 AM we steamed into the Georgetown Harbor. Since the Nieuw Amsterdam can hover, we were at the far edge. We would be tendering in using our lifeboats. A bonus for me, I’ve always wanted to be see inside one.

Each boat is powered by two small Diesel engines and has dual props. The engines drive hydraulic pumps that control the front bow thrusters. A pretty sophisticated boat for rescue purposes. Or shuttling guests to shore.

We took an early boat to allow us to walk around town before our bus tour. There were a few of the famous Caymen Banks, but mostly gift shops for the tourists. We picked up some small items and a few post cards. There was a post office in the center of town so we got the cards mailed off.

On our walk around town we passed a submarine tour. The pictures looked like our semi-submersible so we passed. Later on we heard that it really dives under water. They dive the cliff reef nearby and do down to 110 feet below the surface. Something to do when we come back.

Our tour was ready to go at 11 so we loaded into our 20 passenger bus with our driver “Mel” McCoy. He has lived all his life on the island and kept up a running dialog for the rest of the day.

First stop was at a bakery that made rum cakes and other pastries. We were able to sample both the finished cakes and the rum that went into it. The cake was good, Susan got a small one to take with us.

They also bake meat pies, like the traditional British ones you find in England, Australia and New Zealand, etc. We shared a beef and cheese pie and a chicken pie that had island flavors. Very good a nice island lunch.

Our next stop was the Caymen Island Brewery. We got samples of their beer (they make 7 different kinds). The manager then took us on a tour of the brewery. They are very aware that they are on an island so recycling and minimizing what they need to import is very important. For example they sell the used plant material from the wort to local animal farmers. A local pork producer is their biggest customer.

Bottles and cans are their biggest challenge. They have a huge recycling effort to recapture the aluminum and get ti sent back to their can manufacturer.

Their new bottles come from Germany and are pretty expensive. To offset the the cost they have invested in a bottle washer. They get back used bottles and run it through a wash / sanitize cycle that takes about an hour per bottle. The machine is a continuous process, with about 12 cases in a group. By doing their own cleaning they are able to save on their bottle costs.

At the end of the tour I bought beer to take home. Presently their production is not enough to keep up with local demand. They are growing, but don’t think they will be exporting in the new future.

Next on our bus tour was the XYZZY Rum Distillery. Their claim to fame is they age the rum underwater. They say that the cask when loaded weighs about 700 pounds. In the water its semi buoyant so it’s much easier to move them around. The second is that the cask is constantly moving in the water, it’s always moving, that is how it picks up it’s flavor.

They have two copper stills and two distillation columns to produce the final sprits. Once the distillation takes place they cask the liquid and age it. They then add flavors (banana, coconuts ) and bottle it. Sadly they only sell large bottles at $30/$40 each, it would be nice if they had pint bottles for easier travel.

With a little buzz going we returned to the boat in time for the Cupcake tea.

After tea the lifeboats started returning, so I went out to get pictures of the recovery process. One thing that was interesting that the crew wears helmets to keep from getting bonked in the head by the pulley lift system.

Susan and I watched the movie “Big Hero 6″ about robots in San Frantokyo in the futue. It was a pretty cool movie, the animation was very good.

Dinner was in the main restaurant. For starters we had a dish of Black Mussels steamed in a wine broth, Susan had the veal and I had the grilled salmon.

There was a table of four next to us and I heard them talk about the Mississippi, Ohio, and the Chesapeake Bay. The only people that talk about that in the same set of paragraphs are Loopers. Sure enough they were Loopers out of Ft Lauderdale, they had finished their Loop the week before their trip. We talked a few moments, they knew some of the people we had traveled with.

The show was a steel pan band that played a combination of Broadway show tunes and classical songs. The 4 member band consists of a drummer, a guy playing 4 base pans, a alto pan (for the melody) and a pair of tenor pans. Their best two were “Ava Maria” and the “William Tell Overture”.

Towel of the day was a sea turtle (we think).

3 March 2015

We woke to see Cuba along the starboard side. We ran about 5 miles off shore for most of the day.

Susan was out and about early and I read in bed for about an hour. When she came back we went up to the Crow’s Nest so she could work on her latest project and I could catch up on these blog entries.

My morning activity was a second tour of the kitchen area. The first time was great, the second time I knew which photos I wanted to take so I was able to get them. It’s still amazing they get all those meals out with 120 cooks. About 30 people are responsible for all the dishwashing. With all the glassware, silver and dishes they really have their work cut out for them.

I had missed a picture of it last time, but I got a great one of the clamshell cooker, the grill that does such a great job with the steaks in the Pinnacle Restaurant.

After the tour I had a chance to see the lessons for “DWTS:aS”. There were a lot more people there than I expected.

I stayed for the first part of the “Food and Wine Magazine” cooking demonstration. There is one each day, but being off the boat it’s been hard to see them We got to see how they make the shrimp appetizer, Chili Chicken and the Italian Pork. Each is from the speciality restaurants aboard.

We had been invited to a special lunch with Indonesian dishes. We shared a table with a couple from NY, this is their third cruise. The food was very good and we had a window seat with a great view of the southern coast of Cuba.

After lunch we did Team Trivia. We were joined by 4 other people, but didn’t fare that well. My big surprise was learning that DVD no longer stands for “Digital Video Disk”, so much for being a computer geek.

After lunch we vegged out, me on the Lido deck by the pool, Susan took in a movie.

Dinner was at the pop up Italian restaruant on the Lido Deck. It only serves dinner, they section off a small part of the seating area. There is no extra charge, after eating there we were surprised that there were not more people eating there.

We started off with their selections for Pino and Cabernet wines. For our cold small plates we picked the Salumi and Beef Carpaccio. The meat was sliced very thin along with the cheese. Both types of meat melted in my mouth.

The hot small plates were clams cooked in a vermouth sauce with small bits of sausage, tomatoes and onions. I was happy that there was extra bread to be able to eat the remaining broth. The other plate was veal polpettina with just a touch of basil. The meatball was tender and very flavorful. It was served with a tomato sauce that tasted as if someone’s grandmother had been simmering it all day.

Our shared pasta dish was potato gnocchi with beef short ribs. Again the someone had spent hours braising the meat to perfection. We both liked the gnocchi.

Dessert was four flavors of gelato for Susan and a limoncello creme for me. Mine had small 1/8″ cubes of lemon infused gelatin to give it an additional fruity pop.

We both gave tonight higher marks than our dinner at the Pinnacle. The Pinnacle service was better, but the food here was much nicer.

Our show tonight was the re-creation of the Avalon Ballroom. It was performed by the cruise band, singers and dancers. All of the songs came from the big band era. “Inka Dinka Do” was one of the songs they played. It’s been many decades since either of us had heard that. The crowd loved it, most of them seem to be 20+ years older than us.

The only weird thing about band is there is no horn section, so the guy on the keyboard “plays” the horns. You can hear all the different horns, but only one person is playing.

Towel creation of thre day was a swan, like the first one, it was made of multiple towels.

2 March 2015

It’s our return to Half Moon Cay. We had been given the insider tip to get to the island early to get a good beach “clamshell” to shield us from the sun. We were on the first boat over and were able to get a great location near the beach entrances. Susan got a snorkel set and a floating pad, we were all set for the day.

We lounged around in the shade reading books and looking out into the lagoon of bright blue water. I went out to wade in the water. People had brought packs of breakfast cereal with them to feed the packs of angel fish. It was cool to watch the silver fish jump and snatch the brightly colored loops of cereal. (As an aside, when did Froot Loops become day-glo colors?)

Our only scheduled adventure for the day was an hour long ride on Sea-doos. We had great time zipping around in the lagoon. Once we knew what we were doing, we headed out into the ocean. It was a little bouncy out there, but once we got the timing of the waves it was fun to bounce over them. Coming back into the lagoon there was a good place and sets of waves to jump. I was able to get partially airborne. Top speed for me was 9500 RPM, just at 35 MPH. They are really a lot of fun.

Lunch was the island buffet, it was the same as our last visit with burgers, dogs, sausages and jerk chicken breast.

I hung out on the beach reading while Susan went and used the floar on the gentle waves. Towards our leaving time we went out and stood in the water watching the fish come around looking for more cereal. The day really reminded me of our days in Ocean City when the kids were little.

Once back on the boat we went to the pool area. Susan relaxed some in the hot tub and we both enjoyed a beer. Once we turned out of the shield of the Cay the wind picked up and the umbrellas started flying around the deck. I helped grab them before they crashed into the pool. With today’s excitement over it was time for a shower and sand free clothing.

We stopped by the “Sip and Savor” for a glass of wine and the appetizer of the day, a small toast round with bleu cheese, raisin and a walnut half. It was a very nice canapé.

We had dinner on the third level of the Manhattan Restaurant. Susan had an interesting chevichie of salmon and tuna, I had the pepper pot soup to start. Our main courses were yellow tail snapper and an island spiced pork chop. Desserts were a mango sundae and a double chocolate (white and dark) mousse.

The show tonight started off with a toast to the ship by the Captain. The comic was what I’d consider old school, something you would have gone to in the 80′s. Some great laughs, but some real groaners.

Towel creation tonight was a lobster, lots of folds to bring out the texture.

1 March 2015

Wow, it was a quick week and also a quick month, it’s now March. Just a few weeks more before we head north again.

We got off the boat in Ft Lauderdale to meet with a cousin and her husband. They’ve lived in the Lauderdale area for awhile and offer to give us a tour.

The Lido Deck food area was mobbed with people trying to eat before they got off the boat. So we opted for the formal sit down breakfast in the Manhattan Restaurant. There is something nice about a served breakfast.

Time to get off the boat, and it turns out our travel skills have gotten sloppy. We’ve been able to get off the boat and be on the streets in moments. Welcome back to the USA, it took us almost an hour to get through Immigration. I’m not sure why we needed to do that since we all got on the boat in Ft Lauderdale, security was pretty tight at all the ports and we are all coming back here. Your tax dollars in action.

Once on the street we were good to go. First up was a quick ride through Miami and then to South Beach. The Art Deco buildings with their great colors and “eyebrows” over the windows was very impressive.

We cruised the length of the main South Beach area, a mob of people, antique cars, modern luxury and super luxury cars, people out watching people and people out to be seen. Luxury hotels turned condo and hotels famous from the 50′s with their view of the bright blue Atlantic. All I needed was my Sonny Crocket linen jacket (I already had a t-shirt on) and I was set to re-enact Miami Vice.

We were able to score an amazing parking place about two blocks from the beach. We headed out the hard packed sand (from all the cars driving on it) to the edge of the water. And even though it’s the first of March, the beach was full of people enjoying the day. We had been warned about the topless bathers, and there were a number (both male and female) out and about.

Lunch was at the favorite sidewalk cafe of our hosts the Clevelander. Lots of people walking by and glances our way, could it be we are people to see? With the cool sea breeze, good food, cold drinks and great conversation, South Beach was the place to be.

Sated and very happy we headed north to get a quick tour of Ft Lauderdale. We know from our limited driving around that Florida traffic is a crapshoot. We were in and out of traffic a few times, never really seeing what was causing the problems.

We turned into Ft Lauderdale to cruise the beach. We got stopped by the drawbridge at the southern end, near the cruise terminal. While we waited, the car next to us popped their hatch and the passenger was digging out water bottles. He saw us watching and offered us some. We declined, and once the hatch slammed shut we saw the North Carolina plates. “Ahh, that explains it, Florida residents would never do that” said our host.

We crawled along the beach and our thoughts went to when does spring break start. About a mile later we found out, there was a fraternity flag (Omega Tau Budweiser) flying on the beach with about 200 kids around it. Spring break starts in March.

After gawking our way down the Ft Lauderdale beach we got back to the boat just at our 3PM boarding time. We just made it to lifeboat station just in time to be counted.

A Princess boat left ahead of us. Rather than the normal horn, they play the staring notes of theme to “The Love Boat”.

Sunday night was the start of a new week, so the dinner menu starts recycling. We both had seared sea scallops. Susan had roast chicken with quinoa pilaf, I had very rare prime rib and a huge baked potato. Key Lime Pie and little pastries ended dinner on a high note.

The show tonight was an introduction to the musical acts that we will see in the next week. It was pretty good, the shows aboard have been well done.

Towel creature tonight is a frog. Not our stewards best work, but pretty cool.

28 February

We both slept very well last night, we’ve gotten very used to the vibration, it’s just the occasional lurch that wakes us up.

Breakfast this morning was eggs over easy and the left over chateaubriand from our “Le Cirque” dinner. It was still very good, a nice way to start our last day on this leg.

After breakfast I headed up to the Explorers Club to work on blog posts. There is a great view today of the water, rolling swells with some scattered whitecaps. (Winds are only about 20kts).

About 11:30 Susan joined me, we are going to attempt to play the “Team Trivia” The last few days have been won by a team of 6 players. I had listened to the questions a few days ago and they were pretty hard, I only knew 3 out of the ten.

We were joined by a couple from Iowa. We did pretty well, we had 9 points out of 15. The winning team only had 12. We missed questions like “What was the name of Alexander the Great horse?” Bucefalus. Should have paid more attention in ancient history class.

After “Team Trivia” we walked over to the Captains Corner to play Pictionary. We won, a combination of our team being very good and the other team being pretty bad.

A late lunch was burgers from the “Dive In” drive through. The fries were the best part, they had a spicy mayonnaise that added a lot of flavor.

The rest of the afternoon was taken up by reading and a nap. Cruising is hard work.

We has a quick cocktail at the bar and then headed to the Manhattan Restaraunt for dinner. It was international night, with dishes from around the world. Susan went for an Asian Spring Roll and Italian Risotto with Cod. I had a crab cake to start and cirribian beef pot roast. Dessert for both of us was a kiwi and passion fruit pavlova.

A short stop upstairs to the Crow’s Nest trying out some games. Phase 10, a card game, turned out to be too complicated for us to figure out. Pairs of Pears didn’t have instructions. We made it through a round of Trivial Pursuit even though it was missing pie slices. At that point we gave up and headed down to the theater.

The show was “Dancing With the Stars: at Sea”. It’s like the ABC TV version, except that cruise members are the stars. It was OK, but we were not fan of “Jazzy”, one of the judges. Every comment came with “It was a Candy Crush, I give you two snaps and a “. He ran through Snicker, Almond Joy, etc. a different one for each contestant. I think he was channeling his inner Marcy. (the woman that screams on “So You Think You Can Dance”).

The winner gets a free cruise where all the winners get to participate in the grand contest. A very talented girl won doing the waltz.

Since the show didn’t start until 9:30 PM, we were in bed moments after the show ended. Well in as many moments as it takes to walk the length of the ship.

There was a walrus tonight on the bed, it was very creative. The towels get better and better as the cruise continues.

Yesterday our trip to St Thomas took us as far south as we would go on this trip. We’ll now race north about 950 miles to be in Ft. Lauderdale for the next two days. It gives us a break to relax from all the touring that we’ve been doing. On the next leg we will have sea days between the tour days to break things up a little better.

Susan figured out how to get fried eggs and I found where the amazing breakfast pastry is set. I had a chocolate chocolate-chip muffin that was very cake like, it was very very good.

After breakfast was the second part of my behind the scenes tour. Today we visited ship stores, bakery, pastry kitchen, the full kitchen and prep areas, dishwashing, waste management, laundry and tailoring and the oriental restaurant Tamerind’s special kitchen. I’ll put all the details in another post. (I’m going to geek out, so you can skip it).

We had sushi for lunch, it’s made fresh daily, and there were 10 different rolls. For health / safety reasons, they are all cooked rolls, but they were very good. My favorite is the spider roll, it has fried soft-shell crabs in it.

After lunch Susan headed up to the explorers lounge to read some and to work on her bead project. The explorers lounge is on Deck 11 and is at the bow of the boat. You have an expansive view of the water ahead.

I spent time on our balcony in the sun finishing off my book. Very nice, there is a gentle rock to the boat.

At 2:30 I headed down to the sports bar for the International Beer tasting. Because it had not been advertised, there were only two of us that showed up. The bartender kindly gave us both a free beer (we chose Boddingtons) an English Ale. We chatted with the bartender about some of the different styles and beers that we like.

After that I headed back to the room for a nap. I had just fallen asleep when Susan arrived from her bead making adventure. We read together for awhile and then watched a movie about P.L. Travers and the creation of the Disney version of the Mary Poppins movie. It was pretty cool, she really terrorized the Disney staff in making them keep to the story.

Dinner was at the Pinnacle Restaurant, back to it’s regular menu. Unlike last night where we both had the same thing off the menu, we had different things.

Susan started with a lobster soup. The bowl started off with little bits of lobsters and vegetables in a bowl, they then poured a lobster bisque.

Having learned my lesson with the 400F soup from the prior night, I went with the dudgeonus crab cakes. They were a cornmeal and crab mix. It came with a lightly flavored apricot sauce that really enhanced the flavors.

Susan opted for the 8 ounce fillet, I went for the NY strip steak. Our veggies were Brussels sprouts with a crispy cheese cracker and mashed potatoes. We had three different sauces: béarnaise, horseradish-mustard and garlic butter.

Dessert was “A non-traditional Baked Alaska”. It was cherry vanilla ice cream, cake and a whipped soft meringue that had been toasted. It was very good.

The evening show showcased the four male singers, the show is called Cantare. The MC said that they were hired to do this show, the other two shows (Garage Band and NYC) were then built around these 4 singers.

They were very good, they sang a variety of songs from a number of decades and styles. They opened up with “He ain’t heavy” moved through “It’s a wonderful world”, a number of show tunes, Beach Boys, Beatles and Queen songs. They closed with four Italian love songs, since Cantare means “song” in Italian. I really liked it, I’m hoping they give an encore performance next week.

They had a small orchestra with two guitars, a drummer, two keyboard players and a violinist. Rather than having sheet music, they all had iPad’s on stands. I couldn’t see the screens but I’m guessing they all were scrolling automatically with the music. It’s pretty cool the way that small, wireless connected displays have worked their way into a number of different applications.

Susan headed back to the cabin and I caught the first set of the “BB King All-Stars”. The room was packed and I ended up standing at the back. There were a number of couples on the dance floor and the band was rocking. I’ve noticed that there is a lot of musical “off roading” that goes on when they play the smaller room. They pretty much stuck to the music when they were playing the concert. I do wish they would play an earlier show so I could see two sets without staying up so late.

Tonights towel creation was the most elaborate, an orangatang hanging from one of the hangers. It looks like it’s made up of three different towels. We got a number of good pictures with First Mate Pig. And for the Pig Fans out there, he’s having a great time on the cruise.

Today we have a number of things to do on St. Thomas.

First up was breakfast, the highlight of mine was eating congee. I did a sample with chicken, beef and fish. The sauces are very good with a little spice, it was almost dinner for breakfast.

We disembarked and fought our way through the vendors offering us amazing deals on jewelry and other items. Our tour guide loaded us into a van for our trip across the island to the Coral Reef Beach.

The roads on the island are very narrow and loop around the mountain sides. A bonus is that we are in left hand drive cars on the left side of the road. It was a little disconcerting since our driver in an effort to keep us off the side of the road often crossed the middle line.

We were soon at Coral World Ocean Park. It a combination white sand beach and marine park. We went in the marine park side and headed towards the Sea Trek, a helmet dive adventure.

The helmets look like astronaut space helmets with a handle on the top. We had seen them at the History of Diving Museum in the keys. They weigh about 50 lbs out of the water. It’s connected to a air source via a 200′ hose. In the water the hose supplies air. Because there isn’t any way for the air to escape out the top the helmet it stays full of air. Your head and face are dry as you walk around the bottom. It’s great for me since I can wear my glasses inside the helmet. Because the neck is loose you can actually slide your hand up inside and scritch your nose. They are super simple and first came into vogue with amateur treasure hunters.

We climb down the ladder until we are about 20′ below the surface. There is a hand rail that you hold onto that takes you around the coral areas. There is a scuba diver to keep track and there is a diver in a helmet that leads the way. He points out things to make sure that we see. There is a big shelf that you need to squat down to see under. It’s worth it, it’s loaded with smaller, brightly colored fish.

The lead guy has a bottle loaded with smaller bait fish. He was surrounded by grouper, yellow tail and some smaller black fish. (It’s hard to ask questions since no sound escapes the helmet) (Like the phrase, “In space nobody can hear you scream” from Aliens. ) Anyway he would squirt a bait fish out and it would be immediately snatched up. The guide would need to use his knee to move the fish away as they became too aggressive.

The guide also picks up things off the bottom for us to play with. So we got to touch a lobster, a sea urchin an a starfish. Very cool.

It seemed like we had been underwater for just a few minutes, but our 45 minute tour was done. We climbed back up and changed into dry clothing. In the center of the tower we had walked around are two levels. The upper level is a shark tank that goes around the tower. The lower level has view ports that you can see out and see where we had walked. There wasn’t a dive group scheduled for awhile, so we didn’t get a chance to see what people look like with the helmets on. I need to see how Susan’s Go-Pro underwater camera worked out to see how we look.

We went through the rest of the marine park. There was a big building with a number of smaller tanks with different kinds of fish in them. Out front was a tank with stingrays hiding out in the bottom.

For years I’ve used the term “Off like a herd of turtles.” Today I actually saw a herd of turtles. They have a giant pen an at one end was about 25 red eared turtles hanging out. Very cool!

After seeing all the marine exhibits, we got back in our tour bus and headed back the wharf.

Dad and Betty had lived on St. Thomas for a number of years. One of his favorite places to go was “Tickles Bar” at the marina a few miles from his home. It’s a well known cruise ship stop, but after they are gone at 4:30 the local crowd comes in. They no longer have buckets of beer, but we did have the local St John’s beer and the best conch fritters that I’ve had. So the sprit of Tickles lives on.

After lunch at Tickles we split up. Susan went east to ride the tram up the mountain to see the views. I headed onto the boat to do part one of the “behind the scenes” tour, the second part will be tomorrow. It will end up being a long post, so I’ll save it for later.

One thing I did see from the boat was two giant tanks on the dock. They were 150 feet long and about 25 feet in diameter. What made it super interesting was they were on a 40 wheel transport (10 axels per side, double wheels on each axel.) What was neat was each pair of wheels was an independent swerve drive. This let the driver have exact control on where the transport and the tank were going. He was able to make it crab across the dock and then rotate it around the transport axis to position it to be moved off the dock. The swerve drive has been used by FRC Robotics Team 1640 in their robots for the last few years. They have chosen it for the high maneuvering abilities.

Being somewhat cheap, I’ve been frequenting the “Pinnacle Bar”. They have $4 glasses of wine and a free appetizer, which makes it my kind of place. (Regular wine in $6.95 a glass, and the beer selection is lame). Today at the Pinnacle there was a huge rainbow off the starboard side. It ran from waters edge well up into the clouds. Very pretty.

Tonights dinner was at Le Cirque. Once a week they re-brand the Pinnacle Restaurant something else and bring in cuisine from a famous restaurant. Tonight it was “Le Circ” from NYC. I’m pretty good with paying $80 for dinner for two. And I’ve been known to do $80 a person, most of the time it includes drinks. Tonight, dinner was a fixed price at $79 each, plus wine, plus tip. So we both had high expectations.

First up was a amuse bouche of chicken liver mousse over gelled berry juice. Susan loved it, since I’m not a liver mousse guy, it fell a little flat.

The salad course was a fresh lobster tail over a circle of three kinds of greens, some grapefruit sections, cooked baby green-beans a and sections of cold finger potato slices. The two different sets of sauces played off the ingredients, each mouthful had some other combination playing off of each other. The central ingredient, the lobster tail tied all of the flavors to give a cohesive set of flavor profiles.

Next was a small bowl filled with 1/2 dozen green peas, some small, whole (cocktail sized) onions that had bee blanched and a dumping made of rice flour and parmesan cheese. They then pour in a broth made of fresh peas that have been whisked into a perfect cream like consistency. I had to wait for it to drop from 400F to something I could stick in my mouth without screaming. (In a Restaraunt Everyone can hear you scream) It was very good and well worth the cooling time.

The main course was chateaubriand , it was perfectly cooked to medium rare, which makes it pretty rare for most people. Sides were beets with blueberries, carrots an dried currents that had bee soaked. A flan of horseradish was paired with a small pitcher of the beef juice that was almost a perfect gravy. Wow, just wow. The beef was sliced at table-side to give it that extra flair.

The beef also had an amazing crust on it, it went the entire way around the beef. I found out in the kitchen tour that they have a special beef press that is a suspended rack has heating elements all around it. A few minutes in the press gives it the all around flavorful crust.

Dessert was strawberry Pavlova, but in a non traditional presentation. The meringue was in a ring, and in the center was fresh strawberries. There was also a small pitcher with a strawberry sauce that was very flavorful.

The evening show was the “BB King All Star Band” stage show. It’s a glitzier version of their regular shows that we’ve enjoyed. There is more show with the set moving around some and different scenes. It was pretty good, but I think I like the club version a little better.

I only got a chance to write part of this before it started to sprinkle.

Tonights towel creation was a puppy laying out with it’s paws in front of it.

Another over night sail and half the day to get us to San Juan (21 hours to go 335 nm, still faster than the Quo Vadimus. We kept our shadow boat the Eurodam on our starboard beam for the trip.

It’s weird not having the internet for news but needing to rely on digests from the NY Times, the Canada press and the BBC foreign news service. If read Dutch or German, I could also have those digests to round out my day. Sadly there isn’t a lot of tech news coverage so that will have to wait until I get interweb access again.

On the other hand, having only 16 pages of news to digest, I was able to get by with a small breakfast. I went English style today with tomatoes, beans and bangers. Susan found the oriental breakfast bar and had some very interesting looking items.

My new place to hang out is the Explorers Club on the front of Deck 11. The last two days it’s been empty so I’ve had my pick of seats. Sadly today was the trivia contest. It’s normally in the afternoon, but with the late arrival time they have moved all sorts of activities around.

Lunch was at Tamarind, the Asian restaurant. For lunch they offer a Dim Sum, but they pick the selection. You have a choice of hot and sour soup or wonton. After that they bring you a salad, three kinds of steamed dumplings along with a few fried items and a huge bowl of vegetable fried rice. There is a selection of desserts you can choose from.

I was very happy to find out that the hot and sour soup is wonderful. It won’t replace The Linn’s masterpiece, but it’s in the top 5 versions. The chef has taken the time to make sure that all the ingredients will fit on a spoon. Lots of times there are ends flopping off the spoon. The balance between the hot and sour flavors were spot on.

San Juan is a popular stop, so the land tour lines were long, but we got off on our “Old and New San Juan” tour pretty much on time. We were told by our guide that there were 6 ships in port. A pair of Disney boats and the Carnival ship arrived early in the morning. Celebrity was next about 10 AM and the two Holland boats arrived at 1PM. Based on how many people got off our boat and doing the math (the other 4 boats hold 4,000+ people to our 2,100), all told about 15-16,000 people took to the streets.

So traffic was a little bit a challenge getting out of the port. But we were soon zooming down the highway from the port and Old San Juan to the newer section with some hi-rise buildings and an upcoming business district.

Our first stop was a beach on the northern shore. The “easterly trade winds” come from Africa and hit the eastern end of the island and then are split in half to run down the outer edges of the island. To the east from San Juan is tropical rain forest, the moisture soaked winds drop 120-140 inches of water in that area. The winds in the winter months (like today) rip across the island at about 18-22kts with gusts to 35. It was interesting watching two kite boats fly across the water. If they would do a jump, out of the water the kite would lift and take them 75′ to 100′ across the water. Looked like a lot of fun.

Next was winding around the back streets of Old San Juan to get to the fort. The fort had taken about 100 years to construct in the 1600′s and was a major feature to San Juan’s safety. Most of the City was inside the walls. In the late 1800′s a large chunk of the wall from the northern ramparts to the wharf area was torn down to give better access into the city.

The fort is massive huge limestone walls and ramps. It had been used a number of times to successfully defend the island.

After the fort we were dropped off into a shopping area of Old Town. (Passed gas stations with $0.59/L fuel ($2.10 gal) Lots of little shops and street vendors. But the big guns (MK, Dior, Jimmy Chu and lots of bling vendors) were also well represented.

I kind of ignored that and headed to the bar with the $2 beer sign. Susan did pick up some post cards but we mostly watched the tourist throngs undulate down the street.

After getting back to the boat and getting our bearings we headed out to the CVS that was doing a land office business of forgotten toothpaste, mouth wash, chocolate bars, etc. We were grimly met with Budweiser six packs for $7.88 where we pay almost that for a single bottle.

We found a street side Cafe and had local dishes. I started us off with ground beef meat pies. Lots of flavors and the pastry was firm, not burned, a great envelope for the filling. (names here). It was tender and wonderful. With drinks, appetizers, food, tax and tip it was under $50. A deal!

Susan grabbed a small print of San Juan harbor that she liked. She has been collecting these small prints for years as remembrances of trips we’ve taken.

At the boat we split up, armed with my iLap I headed over to Senior Froggies for a beer and access to their wi-fi. I was able to check my mail and post 4 quick stories. I had left over time to even do some internet web surfing to see how the robotics teams are making out.

Froggies was rocking out and by the end of my hour of time I was ready to roll. It took a few blocks before my hearing got back to normal.

Back on the boat it was towel time, tonights was a huge elephant. Nicely done, this one really took a great deal of effort to make happen.

Learning from yesterday we did not order room service, so we were able to sleep in until 6:30.

We did the breakfast buffet and continued our unsuccessful process of trying everything. There are way too many things that they offer each day. For Susan the coffee is very good, so that’s making her mornings go pretty well.

Unlike other cruise lines, Holland offers an engineering tour of the boat. I was able to sign up for it, it’s during our 6th day (Saturday) at sea. I’m looking forward to it, the tour lasts about 2 hours, I’m sure that I’ll embarrass myself by totally geeking out.

We are finding some glitches in the ships communications. They printed the wrong dates and times for some of the events. I showed up to the “International Beer Tasting”, the bartender was very confused, since it does not happen until day 6.

Today I went to get the ship board printed paper, and they had reprinted yesterday’s paper again. I guess that is one way to cut costs and keep circulation going.

We docked at Grand Turk at the cruise dock. We were sharing it with the Eurodam, another Holland America boat.

Our first adventure for the day is a Segway tour of the town that is on Grand Turk. Susan and I love the Segway and pretty much every place we go we try to take a tour. We did the training class, our mounts are the X2, Segways designed for off roading. Unlike other Segways where leaning is enough to steer, on these you move the central post left and right to steer.

Helmets on, narration earpieces in place and we were off. This is where the depressing part starts. The island is pretty poor and it has been decimated by storms in the past. Lots and lots of the homes are just a mess. There are a few small shops, but it didn’t appear like there was much selection.

On the other hand the dominate item on the horizon is a huge cell and TV tower. The entire island has great cell coverage and most people get internet services via “Lime”.

Health care is cheap, gas is expensive (6.15 per gal for diesel), alcohol is cheap and lots of people work for the government or the tourist trade. You can go away to University and if you agree to work for the Government, the school is free. But there isn’t much else going on.

Other than that the tour was great and I’d highly recommend it if you are on the island. We didn’t see any other Looper boats or a marina, so we don’t know how long term visitors stay.

Our next tour was on a “Semi-submersible” boat. Think of a 45′ Bayliner with glass windows on the inside hull. We took a short boat ride out to the reef that we would be cruising around on.

Once we moved over to the “Semi-submersible” and climbed down into the hull, the Captain took us around the reef. We saw about 8 different types of fish, lots of coral and a sea turtle. After about 40 minutes of touring around, a diver jumped in and started feeding the fish.

Down in the water the colors are OK, but with the diver coaching them to come to the surface, the sunlight makes the colors POP. Bright BLUE along with vibrant YELLOW. Ok, so there isn’t much you can do with a turtle, but the fish were pretty impressive.

The diver then showed off, he blew “air rings” in the water. Fun to watch and sometimes they would link together.

On the way back Susan and I talked about the boat, it has a 5′ draft, it would be the perfect loop boat. Or maybe not, with the logs and trash on the Mississippi, there would always be the fear of smashed glass. But imagine going through the locks, the crystal clear water of Canada, dolphins and manatees in Florida.

Next up was a quest for a dive bar. We’ve tried to find as many as possible, our last success was on the way home from Key West. I had asked the Segway guides and they suggested “Jack’s Shack” and the local beer.

We navigated through the pristine port area and trundled up the beach. (The soft sand is hard to walk through and we walked about 3/4 of a mile. Pick a better word).

Jack’s is a great dive beach bar. Volley ball along with beach chairs. A huge wooden deck with tables with bright umbrellas. Cheap beer at $4 a bottle, conch fritters and fries for $10. This is truly a place I could stay at. The local beer comes in Amber, Lager and Stout and they are very good.

There is the downside of Holland’s schedule, I could sit here for hours watching the bright blue waters and the hours spin on and on. But schedules are schedules and we are back on the boat by 3PM and soon on our way.

Being European, the boat has afternoon tea at 3:30. Today was cupcake day and having a professed love for all things Tasty-Kake, cupcakes seemed to be the thing to do. I started off with Earl Gray tea, chocolate, vanilla and red velvet cakes with icing and decorations. Yum!!

Wait there is more! Flan and a fruit tart soon follow. But now I sense that I’m being judged by the “Ladies that have tea” as an interloper. So I lick the last vestiges of sugar off my fingers and head to the stateroom for a nap.

I’ll fast forward to dinner (after all this is a food blog). Susan had a seafood appetizer and an amazing piece of salmon. I went with the corn and pepper chowder, my main was the Turks Pot Roast. The calorie counter clicks past 11,000 for the day, but it’s been worth it.

Sporting sunburn, Susan heads back to the state room, I head to the “Theater at Sea” theater for tonights show. It’s called Recycled Percussion. It’s hard to describe, it’s four musicians and lots of percussion. Drums, body parts, ladders, etc. It is very loud, but it is very kid friendly and everyone has a great time.

I wandered back to the “B.B King All Star Band” show. I really liked them last night, and the first set was really good. The band is hot, and you can see how much fun they are having. The songs in this set were very different than last night and not so many dancers. Could it be that dressed up people dance more?

After watching the first set of the “B.B. King All Star Band” I headed up to the Observation deck (where I’m writing this).

It’s a nice breeze, there is a soft song with french lyrics in the background and a 1/2 moon above. Across the way is the Eurodam heading with us to San Juan. It was a very pretty day, and this is nice way to end it.

Tonight the towel was a very fancy swan, it took two different towels to make it.

Location Half Moon Cay 24 34.439N 75.57.867W

The ship steamed 224 nautical miles overnight to put us in the Bahamas early morning.

And our morning started off very early. Susan and I had put a breakfast order in for coffee and a muffin for between 6 and 6:30. On the Quo Vadimus Susan is up around 5:30. Today we were both sound, deeply sound asleep at 6AM when the bang came at the door. Expecting a pot of coffee and a muffin Susan was ill prepared for the 2 foot by 3 foot tray table. She had to quickly clean the coffee table off so the waiter could move the tray into place.

We’ll try a different plan on Tuesday.

The boat made better time than expected, so they were ready to offload people to Half Moon Cay by 8:30. Since we had been up for awhile we were some of the first to get onto the tender.

Back in 1990 Holland Cruise line leased a cay from the Bahama government for 99 years for around $6.5 million. They then did about $17 million in work to build a protected harbor, three generators, staff housing for 80 people and a few miles of beach for swimming. Oh and a cell tower.

Since then between 4 and 7 Holland and Carnival cruise liners stop each week to drop passengers off for the day. It’s a pretty nice setup, there are chairs, cabanas, a special kids play space, jet ski rental, glass-bottom boat tours and of course, three different themed bars. Your own private beach that you share with 2,000 strangers. In our case, I’ll bet only about 1,000 people got off, so it was not very crowded.

Our “tour of the day” was the Eco-tour of the inner lagoon. While we were in a glass-bottom boat, they took great pains to say it was an Eco-tour, not a glass-bottom boat tour. (I think to keep the official glass-bottom boat tour people from getting cranky.

Our small group of 8 people set off in our Eco-boat across the lagoon. The lagoon covers 117 acres and is about 5 miles long. Depth ranges from 1 foot to 17 feet. The transparent bottom of the eco boat let us look at a variety of fish, conch, sea cucumbers, and a number of different kinds of coral.

It was a pretty interesting tour. The boat ends up at the mouth of the lagoon. There was a incoming tide and it was ripping through the entrance. I asked about the water depth and was told at high tide it was about 3 feet. So much for coming back in the Quo Vadimus for another visit.

The water is very, very clear, it was easy to see the bottom, even at the deep parts. The last time we saw water this clear was in Canada. Up there it’s a combination of the lard rock and lack of people. Here it’s the hard coral and lack of people.

Guest transportation around the island is via these large trucks with four rows of facing seats. Think of the war movies with everyone loaded in the back of the truck and you have the right picture. Lucky for us the rides around the island are short.

We got a ride over to the lunch pavilion. It was a surprising spread with seafood salad, slaw, a tossed salad and a potato salad with mango in it. (Yea, weird on paper, but pretty good to eat) Protein choices were hot dogs, hamburger, sausages, chicken, island style beef and the ever popular veggie burger.

After lunch we walked down the beach to the “Captain Morgan Shots Fired” bar. It was a 80′ pirate ship that looked like it had been in a battle. There were large “splintered” holes in the side. Inside was a stage for a band (today was a lone steel drum player working with pre-recorded backing an a large long bar. Upstairs was more tables and a few more steps up a poop-deck with another set of tables. Very festive and pirate like.

We sat for awhile looking at the bright blue water and white sand. I can see how people really get hooked on the Bahamas as a place to vacation.

From our ship we headed down the beach. The sand is a fine white powder, finer than any other sand I’ve seen. The water was warm and the waves were very light. A picture perfect day at the beach.

Our next stop was the “I could stay here forever” bar. A catchy name and it does catch the spirt of the place. It’s located up on the dune and it also has two levels. We were able to score two seats looking out across the sand and across the water to our boat. Very peaceful and tranquil. The water coming in lapping at the shore makes for an almost zen like relaxation.

But time moves on and our drinks were gone and we moved down the beach towards the water tenders. We were soon headed back to the Nieuw Amsterdam.

When we got closer we noticed that there was not an anchor out, nor was there a mooring ball. I then remembered the special drives and bow thrusters. The boat was keeping itself in position. This brought up new possibilities for the Quo Vadimus, I could replace the drives in my boat and not have to worry about anchoring any longer. Something else to add to the list of things to buy with our lottery winnings.

The afternoon went by pretty easily. Susan did another spa thing and I sat by the pool working on the blog posts. (I got a Zagg keyboard cover for the iPad and some really nice local editing software (thanks Miss Linda for the suggestion). The iPad now acts like a mini-laptop and I’m good to go. I’ll find out in two weeks how good the upload part really is when I go to post these on the blog.

As I next to the pool, the sunshade closed part of the way. A pretty neat way to deal with the setting sun making it uncomfortable for guests.

I was able to get a quick beard trim in before dinner. The salon girl was good, and figured out pretty quick that I was’t interested in the up-sell process.

We did a quick dinner at the “Lido Buffet” and then headed to the “Theater at Sea” theater (yea, redundant) for the Captains Toast and to see the show. Since it’s a formal night most people were dressed in suits and fancy dresses. I put on my formal polo shirt (the black one) to fit in.

The Captain and his officers are all Dutch. He’s been a Captain of a cruise ship for the last 20 years and has been the Captain of the Niew Amsterdam since she set sail. He’s in his mid 40′s, so he will be around for awhile. I’ll need to look up how you become a cruise ship captain, but I may have missed my window.

The dance / musical review was pretty good. The back wall is a Jumbotron screen, so they had backdrops of New York locations. They sang standard NY songs like “In a New York State of Mind”.

The stage was a lot more complex than you would think for a boat. The Jumbotron flew up into the flyspace. There was a front elevator that went across the stage it was about 8′ deep. The center of the stage was a turntable and there were three elevators that both went above and below the stage level. They were able to use it for lots of good staging.

We had free champagne with the show (Yay Holland) and it was interesting to walk along the slightly lurching hallway to the stern of the boat.

About 1/2 way back there was a club with the “BB King All-Star Band” playing blues. They were very good and there were a number of couples that danced. We stayed for their first set. They play almost every night so I’ll get a chance to hear them again.

Today’s towel animal is a stingray. It’s super easy to make, take a towel, fold into a square. Now make a 1″ wide diagonal lump across the towel. Add googly eyes at the end of the diagonal and you have your stingray.

After a pretty hectic week of activities we were both pretty exhausted. We had finished packing the night before and just needed to take care of the last details of shutting the boat up, making sure we had everything and the all important last trash run.

We were on the dock and waiting for our driver to pick us up at 7. Unlike the last trip north to Ft Lauderdale, there was very little traffic. Susan had planned on 3 hours of travel, that would put us right at the Everglades Cruise terminal just as they opened up reservations. With zero traffic on the road we got dropped off a little after 9AM.

The registration doors opened at 9:30AM and we were some of the first through the system. For some reason it’s much faster to check in for a boat than an airline. We did need to wait until 11:30 to begin boarding. The chairs in the lounge were very comfortable and we had things to read while we waited. The checkin line was pretty steady, it never looked like there were more than 10 people in line at any one time.

At 11:30AM we started boarding. First up was the “Welcome Aboard Photo”, our first chance to spend additional money with the cruise line. We quickly found our room and unpacked our carryon items. I hit my first snag of the day, I had left my sunglasses on the seat next to me in the waiting area. A walk back (like a salmon swimming upstream though the crowd) to the seats. Rats, no glasses. A quick check with the check-in agents also didn’t turn up the sun glasses. Looks like I’ll be hitting the gift shop for some new ones.

While I was off searching, Susan had gone to the top deck and gotten lunch started. By the time I got back there was a Bloody Mary waiting for me. The food was very good, we were both very pleased.

Back in our cabin our checked items had been delivered. We did the last part of our unpacking and took our first nap of the cruise. We are in the aft part of the boat, so we can feel the engine vibrations, Susan said they were like the magic fingers beds. Needless to say we both slept very well.

I was startled awake by the announcement system going off, it was time for our safety drill of the cruise. Soon the lucky people of life raft 17 were assembled and accounted for. After a brief lecture we were released.

Our boat the Nieuw Amsterdam is pretty new, launched in 2010. So she has bow thrusters that easily pushed us off the dock. The channel from the Everglades Cruise Dock out to the ocean is pretty narrow and the Coast Guard was busy keeping boats out of our path. There was not a lot of clearance on either side and we watched boats get bounced around pretty good in the wake.

We were soon out of the channel and turning north. North?, hey that’s the wrong way, we should be going South. There is a large mooring / anchoring area ahead and we move along side. The Captain announces that there has been a medical emergency and we may be heading back to port to let the person off the boat.

On the starboard (right) side of the boat is a retractable platform that would allow tenders to on/offload people. About 30 mins after the announcement a small fire / rescue boat pulls along side to the now extended platform. (A cool center console with a pair of 250 HP Yamaha engines) They offload a small group of people with medical equipment, including one of those portable EKG machines.

There are a few more announcements by the Captain that there are medical people aboard and he will keep us posted.

About 30 mins after the Fire / Rescue team arrives, their boat pulls along side. They load luggage aboard and a family member. Next is someone strapped into a stretcher carried by 6 people. They move smoothly like they’ve done this lots before and move the patient aboard. The rescue boat moves off and the Pilot boat takes it’s place. The pilot jumps aboard, gives a big thumbs up and they head off.

The Captain announces that we will be underway and will be in Half Moon Cay about 9AM, an hour late. Not a big deal since it’s just a beach day.

Susan heads off to the spa and I go out on our balcony to read a real “dead tree book”. It’s nice to sit in the sunset, there is a nice breeze with the motion of the boat.

There is something a little weird about the boat. It’s got a pretty decent vibration going on. If I was on the Quo Vadimus I’d think that I had a prop slightly out of balance. It may be due to the Nieuw Amsterdam having azipod drives. These are propellers on a mount that does a 360 spin. They can act as forward propulsion, or as side thrusters. With these mounts and a bow thruster the Captain can move the boat sideways.

We’ve noticed the vibrations all over the boat so it’s more than us being closer to the engines.

We got changed into dinner and headed to the “Manhattan Restaraunt” for dinner. There was a slight wait for a table for 2, we waited in the bar next door. There was duo with a cello and a piano playing, they were very good.

Dinner was beef carpachico and NY Strip for Susan, I had “Les Halles” french onion soup and the shrimp and grits with andouie sausage. Their version was less okra more shrimp and it was wonderful.

I’m always amazed with the logistics of a large restaurant and this was no exception. Two people at the front desk, three people to run guests to tables. A wine steward, a person to take orders, a drink person (I was drinking beer), food delivery and someone to clear. Topped off by two visits by the section manager to see if we were happy.

There were tray after tray flying by with food (and we were at the back of the place, who knows what it looked like closer to the kitchen.

I got key lime pie to go since I was pretty stuffed. (I think being stuffed will be a recurring theme across the next 13 days).

On the way back to the room I stopped by the central office. There in the Lost and Found bin was my sunglasses. Some kind shipmate had turned them in during the afternoon. Yay! I will have sunglasses for our beach day at Half Moon Cay.

Towel of the day was a walrus with googly eyes, Susan got a good picture with Pig.

I have not been blogging since we really haven’t been looping. That doesn’t mean we’ve been just laying around. OK, well we did some laying around, but we did do some things.

People ask how the boats been doing. Then answer is pretty well, we’ve been very happy with the Quo Vadimus. When we bough the boat, there were two 11 gallon hot water heaters aboard. At some point in the last two years the first tank (they are connected in series) lost the element, it wouldn’t heat water. Not a big deal since the other tank worked and there was mostly the two of us. In addition, the recovery time for the one tank is pretty short, about an hour from dead cold to 120 degrees.

Sometime in the winter of 2013-2014 one of the tanks sprung a small leak. The fresh water pump would pump about 5 seconds every three hours. Not a big deal and I wasn’t going to worry about it.

As our trip progressed, the leak seemed to be getting a little worse. Since replacing them would be a day long or maybe a two day long task, I wanted to do it in a place that not having hot water wouldn’t be a problem.

I also decided to only replace one tank. I could use the extra storage space in the stair space. Also it would make getting in and out of the engine compartment a little easier.

It turned out to go quicker than I expected, but the guy that did the work was a pro. The old pair came out in about an hour. There was the obligatory parts run and then hooking up the new tank. All in all, just a touch under 4 hours, one of the reasons that it makes sense to hire a professional.

There are no leaks and the extra space is very nice to have. I put the things in plastic totes and it’s easy to slide them up and out of the way.