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Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Rosemary's Caribbean Birthday Cruise


Rosemary had long wanted to go on a Caribbean cruise. I had spent some time in the area while serving in the Navy in the early 1950s and had also visited Puerto Rico with daughter Diana in 2006, but I was more than willing to go again. Because the trip was Rosemary's idea and because we were at sea for her birthday, I have called it Rosemary's Caribbean Birthday Cruise.

We prefer sailing on Holland America because of the intermediate size of their 
ships. We booked passage on MS Nieuw Amsterdam, one of their larger ships with a passenger capacity of 2106. The Nieuw Amsterdam measures 936 feet in length, has a beam of 105.8 and steams at a maximum speed of 23.9 knots. She has a diesel-electric propulsion system featuring ABB Azipod thrusters which place the electric drive motors in pods outside the hull and connect the propellers directly to the motor shafts. Seen below is a public domain photograph1 of an azipod installed on a US Coast Guard icebreaker.

Azipod on USGCC Mackinac (WLBB-30)
We were scheduled to sail from Fort Lauderdale, FL on Friday, 6 December 2015 and would return to the same port on 13 December.

Intending to visit with my brother Don who lives in the area, we arranged to spend two nights in Fort Lauderdale before sailing. The Ace Express Shuttle picked us up at our home in Cottonwood and delivered us to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. We caught the 1610 American Airlines non-stop flight to Fort Lauderdale. Given the two-hour time difference, we arrived at 2221, a little later than we liked, but not too bad since we could sleep late the next morning. The motel shuttle took us from the airport to the Holiday Inn Express Cruise-Airport motel where we had already booked a room, convenient to both the airport and the cruise terminal. Our room included free WI-Fi access and was equipped with an innovative work station in the form of a table that slid under a shelf when not being used (below left). The wash basin, however, was the most intriguing feature: it appeared to be randomly placed (or, perhaps misplaced) on the countertop in the bathroom (below right).

A storm system was hovering over Florida when we arrived on Friday evening and didn't dissipate until well after we sailed on Sunday. My brother, Don, who lives nearby, was unexpectedly called in to work on Saturday and his family were down with a flu-like virus, so we could not visit them. Rosemary and I just spent the day hanging around the motel, reading, working on my laptop and watching television. Anyway, It rained all day and the wind blew so strongly as to turn umbrellas inside out. The only really productive thing we did for the entire day was to arrange transportation by a shuttle bus to the cruise line for the next morning. But room service was available from a nearby restaurant, the motel was cozy and we stayed dry.

The Nieuw Amsterdam commenced boarding at 1300 on Sunday, 6 December and cast off at 1608, under still cloudy skies. After settling into our stateroom, we ate dinner at the cafeteria-style dining room on the Lido Deck. The Lido served a wide variety of good food and we ate there almost exclusively. Each table was decorated with a bouquet of orchids as shown below.

The Lido Dining Room on MS Nieuw Amsterdam

We spent that night and all of the next day at sea. A full day at sea is actually a good way to start a cruise; it gives one time to settle in and select activities for the rest of the cruise. We had already established our basic priorities for the trip. Rosemary would gorge on trivia and I would concentrate on attending the digital workshop. Several different varieties of trivia were offered (pub, family and team); the digital workshop concentrated on Windows 10 but also included sessions on photography. As it turned out, I joined Rosemary for a couple of her trivia sessions, although not as a participant, and she attended a few of the digital workshops with me.

One minor problem we encountered was a loose deckplate in front of the sofa in our stateroom. It depressed when stepped on. Then, when the weight was removed, sprang back into place, so vigorously as to spill liquids from cups on a small table placed on the deckplate. Another problem was with the sofa. The seat sloped down significantly at the front (below left) and occupants were in danger of sliding off. Securing the deckplate would have involved removing the carpet, so we decided to report it for future repair and live with it for the cruise. As for the sloping sofa seat, I just placed two of Holland America's neatly rolled beach towels (below right) under the front of the cushion and, as the saying goes, “Bob's your uncle.”

To be fair, the steward did offer to find us another stateroom. But I had specifically booked a stateroom amidship on the main deck because of Rosemary's tendency to seasickness and, after all, the beach towels corrected the couch and the deck was a small problem.

After sailing a day and two nights, we moored alongside the pier at Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos Islands at 0745 on Pearl Harbor Day, Tuesday, 7 December for a 7-hour stay. As we departed the ship, we paused to look at the graceful brow of Nieuw Amsterdam looming high above us with her bridge outlined against a white cloud floating in the pale blue sky. Some might see it as just a large hunk of steel; I saw it as a work of art.

MS Nieuw Amsterdam moored at Grand Turk
The Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) are a British Overseas Territory consisting of two groups of tropical islands, (the Caicos Islands and the Turks Islands. The capitol of the territory is Cockburn Town, located on Grand Turk Island. The territorial population is around 31500 or, if foreigners are included, 49000.2 The total land area is about 170 square miles. The official TCI currency is the US dollar. Traffic rules require driving on the left side of the road, but all the automobiles I saw had steering controls on the left as is normal for driving on the right side of the road. The main industries are tourism and offshore financing. Grand Turk, bottom right on the below map, is the island where we berthed and the site of our tour.3

Map of British Overseas Territory Turks and Caicos Islands4
We had arranged for a bus tour of Grand Turk during our short visit. We wanted to see as much of the island as possible and the bus would allow us to do that in air-conditioned comfort.

We drove past the former United States Air Force facility where astronaut John Glenn was debriefed after orbiting the Earth in 1962 and continued on to the Salt House, the discontinued site of the Grand Quay Salt Company, now a museum dedicated to telling the history of the island’s salt-raking industry and to the sale of tourist gadgets. The displays included a replica of a windmill (below left) used for pumping water to the salt beds and a memorial to Mary Prince (below right), a slave who once worked in the salt mines.

Bermudan settlers originally came to rake salt in the Grand Turks in the 1660s. The first permanent settlement was built by the salt collectors in 1681. Salting continued through the 18th and 19th centuries and reached a peak of 67,000 tons annually by the early 20th century. However, by the middle of the 20th century, due to the high cost of transportation, lack of a deep harbor and economies of scale, the islands could no longer compete with other lower cost sources. By 1964 the last salting operation on Grand Turk was closed.

Windmill-driven pumps “helped the flow of brine and pickle between the salinas — salt ponds.”5 Some of the old salt ponds, as shown below, still exist.

The following description of work in the salting operations is provided by the Turks & Caicos National Museum:

Raking salt was brutal labor. The hot breeze, the soaring temperatures, and the effects of standing in brine all day or walking barefoot over chunks of salt crystal made the work drudgery. Cuts failed to heal and boils developed on skin constantly exposed to brine. The bright sun reflecting off salt water, white sand, and salt crystals contributed to the onset of blindness. A limited diet combined with a lack of medical care undermined general health. Until British Emancipation of slaves in English colonies, most of the workers were slaves, with a few poor whites and freed blacks. Emancipation in 1833 eliminated the worst abuses of slavery, but did not produce any great change in working or housing conditions.6

One of the slaves who toiled in the salt mines, and later learned to read and write, wrote a book, The History of Mary Prince, detailing her experiences as a slave. The book, published in England, enjoyed three printings in its first year. A brief outline of her life story is told on a plaque mounted at the Salt Works and is also available online at Wikipedia.7

Now unused salt ponds (salinas) at the old Grand Quay Salt Company site
We returned to the ship for lunch and were underway for San Juan, Puerto Rico at 1437, having spent just under 7 hours in Grand Turk.
Nieuw Amsterdam arrived in San Juan the next day, 8 December 2015, at 1248 and Rosemary and I departed immediately on a tour called San Juan Old and New. As noted in my book, A Little work and Some Luck,8 I had visited San Juan numerous times while stationed aboard USS Timbalier (AVP-54), homeported in Coco Solo, Canal Zone, in the early 1950s. Our homeport was changed from Norfolk, VA to Coco Solo, CZ in 1952, just four days after having spent three months tending seaplanes as part of NATO Operation Mainbrace in the North Atlantic:

We arrived back in Norfolk on October 16th and left four days later for Coco Solo, CZ. Coco Solo was our new homeport and we operated from there for the rest of my time aboard Timbalier.9

Additionally, our daughter, Diana, and I had spent a few days in Puerto Rico in 2006, We visited Morro Castle and rented a car to drive around the island and visit the El Yunque Rain Forest.

Rosemary, on the other hand, had never before visited San Juan and I was not really familiar with most of the sights we were scheduled to see today.

The CIA World Fact Book provides the following information about Puerto Rico:

Populated for centuries by aboriginal peoples, the island was claimed by the Spanish Crown in 1493 following Christopher COLUMBUS' second voyage to the Americas. In 1898, after 400 years of colonial rule that saw the indigenous population nearly exterminated and African slave labor introduced, Puerto Rico was ceded to the US as a result of the Spanish-American War. Puerto Ricans were granted US citizenship in 1917. Popularly elected governors have served since 1948. In 1952, a constitution was enacted providing for internal self government. In plebiscites held in 1967, 1993, and 1998, voters chose not to alter the existing political status with the US, but the results of a 2012 vote left open the possibility of American statehood. Economic recession on the island has led to a net population loss since about 2005, as large numbers of residents moved to the US mainland. The trend has accelerated since 2010; in 2014, Puerto Rico experienced a net population loss to the mainland of 64,000, more than double the net loss of 26,000 in 2010.10

The total 2015 CIA World Fact Book population estimate for Puerto Rico is 3,598,357 and that for San Juan alone is 2,643,000.11

Map of Puerto Rico – San Juan is shown near the northeast corner of the island12
Having eaten lunch before our arrival in San Juan, we were ready to disembark and board our tour bus as soon as the ship was tied up. Our tour would be limited to San Juan proper, the shaded area shown on the northeast corner of the island shown on the below map and, as had been the case at Grand Turk, the tour bus was air-conditioned and quite comfortable.

We had spent some time pouring over the literature provided by Holland America for the San Juan stop. Rosemary wanted to see as much of the city as possible without too much walking; I wanted to visit places that I had not seen before. The brochure for the tour we had finally settled on, San Juan Old & New, claimed that it would provide the opportunity to:

...stroll around the grounds of San Cristobál Fortress. This UNESCO World Heritage Site was built in 1634 to protect the city from landside attacks. San Cristobál covers 27 acres, is the largest Spanish fort in the New World, and boasts an excellent view over Old San Juan and the sea. Re-board the coach and continue your guided tour to the New City, which will take you to the Condado District—a modern area of high-rise condominiums and luxury resorts. Return to Old San Juan and stop at Plaza Colón for some free time to spend shopping, taking enchanting pictures, and exploring the local surroundings before you return to the ship.13

Except for whatever we chose to do within the fortress, the entire tour could be done by bus, dismounting only if we wished to see something up close. It included older parts of the city as well as more recent additions and, although I had toured Morro Castle more than once, I had never before visited San Cristobál Fortress.

We visited a city beach, stopping to enjoy the fresh ocean breeze, while watching a sail surfer struggling to launch his sail (below left) and then take off (below right).


Our next stop was old San Juan and San Cristobál Fortress. When construction of the fort was finished in 1783, it basically contained the city of San Juan within its 42-foot walls.14 The main entry to the old city was by way of a set of double gates. Old San Juan had a total six gates, only one of which, San Juan Gate15 (below), is still in existence. It was built in 1520 and used by visiting dignitaries.

San Juan Gate – the only gate remaining in the old wall
In 1897, “after close to one hundred years of relative peace in the area, part of the fortification (about a third)16of the city wall, “from San Cristobál to the harbor docks17, was demolished to permit expansion of the city.

The colonial Spanish architectural theme of the old city has been protected by the implementation of strict remodeling and construction codes. The National Park Service-managed San Juan National Historic Site, established in 1949, serves to protect and interpret the colonial era fortifications, including what remains of the old city wall. Largely as a result of these actions, old San Juan (below) is now a major tourist destination.

Old San Juan from the air – Castillo El Morro at front – NPS photo18
As intimated, our major stop in the old town was San Cristóbal Fortress (below left). I was struck by the visual appeal of the American, Puerto Rican and Spanish Empire flags flying atop the fort (below right).


The entrance to the fort was undergoing reconstruction at the time of our visit. We followed the tourist shown at the right (below left) and entered through a small side door, not visible in the photograph. Once inside the lobby, we had to choose between an elevator or a grim-looking, dimly-lit tunnel (below right) to access the upper levels of the fort.

Rosemary chose the elevator while I took the tunnel. I assumed that we would both come out in the same general area on the next level. Unfortunately, the tunnel took me up two levels to a plaza one level above where Rosemary's elevator deposited her. I was still two stories below the top and assuming the elevator had taken her even higher I took a sloping ramp, sort of like a giant handicapped access ramp, on to the top where I was presented with a panoramic view of the city below.

Panoramic view of San Juan from the top of San Cristóbal Fortress
Looking back down at the plaza on which I had emerged after my trek through the dimly-lit tunnel, I could see two round masonry tubes (below) that looked somewhat like mouths of wells. A nearby sign disclosed that they were openings to the fort's water supply.

The two round masonry tubes provided access to the water supply
An informational sign posted (below) posted just near the two masonry tubes provides additional information concerning San Cristóbal's water supply.

Description of water system at San Cristóbal Fortress
Just as I was beginning to worry about what had happened to Rosemary, she appeared on the plaza below. I hurried back down the sloping ramp to join her and, as it was approaching time to reboard our bus, we descended to the lobby and left the fort to wait in a bit of shade near the boarding area.

Our next stop, actually more a pause, was at Colon (Columbus) Square where we admired the statue of Christopher Columbus (below left) and watched tourists posing with parrots (below right). The vendor with the parrots must having been doing well. I don't know what he was charging but he had no shortage of customers.

The bus made one last stop, for shopping, in old San Juan. We found ourselves among a plethora of touristy shops. We, however, were ready for a before-dinner nap, so we walked down a cobblestone street (below left) to the dock where Nieuw Amsterdam (below right) was moored. We quickly abandoned the tour and re-boarded.


Our guide had told us that the blue cobblestones seen in the preceding photograph (above left) were cast from iron slag, which is the waste from iron smelting. They were brought as ballast in the bottoms of European merchant ships in the 1700s. As the guide put it “they were used as ballast on the way from Spain and replaced with gold for the return journey.”

After a very enjoyable tour we were back in time for a nap and dinner before Rosemary's 1930 game of Pub trivia in the Queen's Lounge. While Rosemary played trivia, I settled contentedly to continue reading a book I had started the evening before, P. D. James' The Skull Beneath the Skin. We were both asleep when the ship set sail for Saint Thomas.

I had visited Saint Thomas once before, that time aboard the USS Timbalier (AVP-54), a seaplane tender. But that was long ago, in 1953 as a matter of fact. Following a three-month Mediterranean deployment and a two-month overhaul in Portsmouth, VA followed by a two-week underway training session at Guantanamo, Cuba we had just returned to our normal seaplane tending duties in the Caribbean. As recorded in my book, A little Work and Some Luck.19

We were back in Coco Solo by the first of November and resumed our normal tending duties, primarily bouncing from there to San Juan and back for the rest of my time aboard Timbalier. We did get one small change of pace in that during a break in an operation in San Juan, we were allowed to go to St. Thomas, Virgin Islands for three days R&R. I distinctly remember this visit because just as I was about to go ashore, I received a call to tell me that a motor had failed on one of the evaporator pumps. The Evaporators (evaporative distillers) were the units we used while underway to distill seawater for personnel use and to feed the boilers. Neither the crew nor the boilers could survive on seawater. A quick examination disclosed that the motor was burned out. I had by now been promoted to EM2 and was in charge of maintaining all the motors in the main engineering space and repairing this one was my responsibility. We could take on fresh water in St. Thomas and return to San Juan with no problem. However, we were scheduled to get underway again the day after reaching San Juan for our return to Coco Solo and we would need to distill water during the four-day transit. The command radioed back to San Juan to arrange an emergency rewind and had me flown back there to deliver the motor in person.

After placing my motor aboard the plane, I saw a crewman casually deposit it, unsecured, near the rear. When I asked whether it shouldn’t be tied down the pilot responded, “Nah, we’re just going to San Juan and the weather is great.” We were no more than a few miles from the airport at St. Thomas when the co-pilot thought he saw something floating in the water that might be a person. The pilot decided to take a closer look and went into a steep dive to make a closer inspection. Only by leaping out of my seat was I able to catch the motor as it went tumbling by straight on its way toward the cockpit. The object in the water turned out to be a floating log. We tied the motor down and continued our trip to San Juan. The new windings had barely finished baking and the motor was still hot when the ship arrived. I carted it aboard, reinstalled and tested it and we were ready to go.20
The United States purchased the southern Virgin Islands of Saint Thomas, Saint John, and Saint Croix (below) from Denmark in 1917. The residents are thus US Citizens.21

Map of the United States Virgin Islands22
All I had seen of Saint Thomas during that long ago visit was the landing strip from which the plane that flew me and my motor back to San Juan took off. The strip, tucked into a valley looking out to sea was short and we were almost over the ocean by the time we lifted off.

This time I got a better view from the mountain, high above Crown Bay of what is now called Cyril King Airport. Although, greatly expanded since 1953, this appears to be the same location as the old air strip.

Looking down on Cyril King Airport
Holland America offered 23 different shore excursions. We chose a tour called the Saint Thomas Island Drive which included the f
ollowing descriptive language and would the above view of the old air strip:

Visit world-famous Mountain Top, home of the original banana daiquiri, where you will have time to browse the charming Caribbean-themed bazaar. Take in the views of the surrounding British Virgin Islands from the observation platform located 1,200 feet above the sea. Vibrant colors and Caribbean Music create a unique and festive experience here. At Drake's Seat, gaze below to the crystalline waters of heart shaped Magens Bay Beach, named one of the top 10 beaches in the world by National Geographic Society.

We tied up at Crown Bay in Saint Thomas at 0800 and our tour was scheduled to start a 0830, just 30 minutes later. We hastened to disembark and headed down the pier toward the reception area (below left) and then were directed to “head for the windmill” which, insofar as I could determine, was just an ordinary building (below right) designed to look like a windmill. I never did determine exactly what it was used for.


Behind the “windmill” we found a staging area where the tour buses loaded. There was a booth with an attendant who, when asked where we were to board our bus, responded pleasantly enough with a vague gesture which could have included the entire plaza and the comment, “Wait there and the guide will call you.” That wasn't too helpful as passengers for several different tours filled the entire area and extremely loud music was emanating from a nearby outdoors bar. We finally just wandered around until we found other individuals scheduled for the same tour. Then we all waited together, assuming correctly that the driver would not leave with so many of his scheduled passengers missing.

According to the best information I could find, Cyril E. King is the busiest airport in the USVI. It covers 280 acres, has one 7000 foot paved runway and averaged 177 aircraft operations per day (year ending September 2014).23

This did not look anything like the landing strip I saw in 1953. On the other hand, the general location seemed familiar and our tour guide said that the airport originally had a much shorter landing strip before the bay was filled in to extend it seaward. I think it must be in the same location, but it is surely not the same landing strip my motor and I took off from 63 years ago.

After only a brief stop we continued on our way up the mountain toward the “World Famous Mountain Top” on Crown Mountain that was mentioned in the brochure. The driver parked our trolley (below left) in the small lot just in front of the store and we disembarked to see just what “world famous” might mean. Mountain Top turned out to be a well-stocked tourist shop that advertised itself as the place to shop in Saint Thomas and the “home of the Banana Daiquiri.” A sign posted nearby (below right) claims to provide the history of the drink.


We were interested in neither the tourist trinkets on sale nor the banana daiguiri, so we quickly made our way through the shop to the observation deck. There, we found a view that I felt was really worthy of the term “world view.” In the below photograph Magens Bay is shown bottom center. Just across the spit of land that separates the bay from the sea is seen Hans Lollick, part of the USVI. The other small islands seen on the horizon are part of the British Virgin Islands.

Magens Bay seen looking northeast from Crown Mountain – the small islands, visible on the horizon, are part of the British Virgin Islands.
Before leaving the viewing deck, I photographed Rosemary with Magens Bay in the background (below left). We then made our way back through the crowd in the tourist shop to the parking lot and stopped to admire a huge burl on a nearby tree (below right) before re-boarding the trolley.

The burl looked, at first glance, like a huge snail climbing the tree. I made a cursory attempt to identify the tree, but without success. From Mountain Top , our trolley traveled east along the ridge, still with views to the north, to Drake's Seat. This is another great viewpoint looking out over Magens Bay. A concrete bench is installed on the upper road bank and a large viewpoint with parking is provided on the other side of the road. Since the view, spectacular though it was, was little different than we had seen at Mountain Top, I settled for a photograph of Drake's Bench (below left). From Drake's Bench we traveled down the south side of the mountain, stopping for a short time at another viewpoint. Here Rosemary had a fellow traveler take a picture of us together with a donkey (below right).

From here we had a panoramic view of the harbors on the south side of the island. A cruise ship is shown moored at Havensight Point (extreme left) and Nieuw Amsterdam is at Crown Bay (extreme right).

The southside harbors – from Havensight Point to Crown Bay
The trolley returned us to the cruise center at the head of the dock. We were back aboard ship in time for lunch. The Nieuw Amsterdam is shown below as seen from outside the shops at the end of the pier.

MS Nieuw Amsterdam moored at Crown Bay, Saint Thomas, USVI
After lunch and an early afternoon nap I finished my P.D. James novel while Rosemary attended a late afternoon trivia session.

The ship departed Saint Thomas at 1645, spent that night and the next day and night underway, arriving at Half Moon Cay at 0748 on 12 December 2015, Rosemary's birthday.

Half Moon Cay is either owned by Holland America or leased from The Bahamas. Some sources say it was purchased outright while others, including the guide on the tour we took, say that Holland America only acquired a 99-year lease. I found a Wikipedia article that provided some general information. That article which, by the way, contradicts the tour guide's statement that Holland America only leases the island is presented here:

Little San Salvador Island, also known as Half Moon Cay, is one of about 700 islands that make up the archipelago of The Bahamas. It is located roughly halfway between Eleuthera and Cat Island. It is a private island, owned by Holland America Line, which uses it as a port of call for the cruise ships it operates in the region. Prior to being owned by HAL, Little San Salvador was the private island of Norwegian Cruise Line.

Little San Salvador Island is located about 100 miles southeast of Nassau. Holland America Line purchased the island in December, 1996 for a price of $6 million USD. It has since developed 50 acres (200,000 m2) of the 2,400-acre (9.7 km2) island, with the stated goal of maintaining as much habitat as possible for wildlife. The island is also a significant nesting area for waterfowl. The island does not have deep water docking, requiring the use of tenders for cruise ship passengers to disembark and embark.

Activities offered on the island include swimming, sunning, scuba diving, jet-skiing, cycling, and snorkeling. Deep-sea fishing, parasailing, glass-bottom boat rides, and nature walks also are available. A variety of water toys are available for rent, including Hobie catamarans, Sunfish sailboats, windsurfing sailboards, and kayaks. There are volleyball and basketball courts, horseshoes, shuffleboard, a fitness trail with exercise stations, horseback riding, and nature trails for hiking.
The island appears as a mere smudge in the sea between Eleuthera and Cat Island on the map of The Bahamas shown in the CIA World Factbook. I have circled it in red on the below map.

Map of the Bahamas24
From the 46 different shore excursions offered, we chose the Calypso Island Tram tour, described in the brochure as follows:

All aboard for a behind-the-scenes peek at the highlights of Half Moon Cay from the comfort of a shaded, open-air tram, accompanied by a professional guide. This excursion is designed to acquaint you with the many and varied visitor areas, activities, and amenities the island offers.

Head out along the coastline from the marina to Cannon Point for an overview of the beach activities and beautiful views of the bay and your ship.

See the island’s inter-denominational chapel and do a circuit of the Dining Pavilion roundabout.

Check out Pegasus Ranch and the island’s ‘airport’ where seaplanes take off and land. The same 700-acre lagoon is also used for jet-skiing, glass-bottom boating and kayaking.

A brief stop at the stingray center provides a different perspective of the lagoon and the chance to see stingrays in their natural habitat.

Back on the tram, you’ll drive past farms that showcase local crops grown for sustainability and beautification of the island.

The industrial area, including the recycling and power plants, serves many very important purposes.

Conclude your tour at Lustre, the pearl kiosk, where you may wish to browse for a memento of your visit.

Half Moon Cay, Little San Salvador Island does not have a deepwater port, so passengers were ferried to and from the reception center by tenders. At the time of our visit there was one other ship, the MS Zuiderdam (below left), was moored in the harbor and we had good views and of the Nieuw Amsterdam and her tender (below right).

As our tender the approached slip leading to the tender pier we had a panoramic view of the beach.

View of the beach as the tender approached the pier
Seen closer up the beach would be dotted with cabanas, clamshell umbrellas, beach chairs and sunbathers. The tall, church steeple-like structure (red arrow) seen at right is just that, the steeple of the Bahamian Church.

On arrival at the Welcome Center, we boarded our tram and were off to see the sights.

Although not initially interested in any of the shore excursions other than the tram ride, we thought the ride might show us something else. But the only really interesting sight was a view of the beach and the two ships moored in the bay.

Beach bay and ships
Conducted by an interesting young woman from a neighboring island who delivered a lot of information in an entertaining manner, the tour did, as promised, acquaint us with the “varied visitor areas, activities, and amenities the island offers.”

However, despite the excellent presentation of our tour guide, my overall impression was that the island's developers had done an excellent job of faking a destination. All of the other ports we had visited on this cruise had a background, something that had preceded the hordes of tourists and tourist-oriented infrastructure. Half Moon Cay, by comparison, had only the tourists and the associated infrastructure. Activities and facilities available included swimming, sunbathing, snorkeling, boating, horseback riding, biking, hiking, bicycle riding and the rental of private facilities. Prices ranged from $19.95 for rental of a clamshell umbrella and two beach chairs to $6,199.95 for what was called the Private Oasis Palm Package with the Ultimate Oasis Package Upgrade. Priced for twelve persons, this $6,199.95 package includes an escorted transfer from the ship and the services of a butler, personal chef and lifeguard. Little of this appealed to us.

Meanwhile, all around us, everyone else seemed to be deeply immersed in the island's adventures and either really enjoying themselves or, at the very least, doing an excellent job of faking it. It all made me feel rather like an old grump.

We returned to the ship in time for lunch and a nap before getting underway at 1435 for Fort Lauderdale. After dinner, Rosemary played trivia, her team winning for the second day in a row, while I settled in with a good book. All in all, it was quite an enjoyable day.

Since leaving Fort Lauderdale on 6 December, we had sailed a total of 2013.5 nautical miles at an average speed of 16.88 knots and visited four ports (Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos Islands; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Saint Thomas, USVI and Half Moon Cay, The Bahamas). Later I traced our route on a map (below) downloaded from the USGS National Map Viewer.25 Red shows the rough track to Grand Turk, green to San Juan, blue to Saint Thomas, yellow to Half Moon Cay and brown back to Fort Lauderdale)

Roughly-drawn track of the ships route
The next day we ate breakfast early and were ready to disembark with the first group of passengers when the ship docked. We were picked up by the shuttle we had pre-arranged and were at Enterprise Car Rental location at 0900.

In addition to my brother, Don, who lives just a few miles from Fort Lauderdale, I have another brother, Amos, and a sister, Leodow, who both live in Okeechobee, Florida, just a little more than 100 miles away and we would spend a couple of nights there before catching our flight back to Phoenix.

We drove to Okeechobee to visit my brother Amos, sister Leodow and their families. We ate lunch on the way and arrived at Okeechobee early in the afternoon. During that afternoon and evening, several other relatives showed up to visit, among them was my sister Leodow and her daughter Kathy, with whom Leodow lives. They are all shown below.

Left to right: Nana Leodow Price Malone (author's sister), Becky Price (Amos' wife), Kathy Prevatt (Leodow's daughter), Rosemary Price (author's wife)
Not entirely happy with the profile of Leodow shown above, I cropped a full-face image (below left) of her from another photograph. Leodow's Granddaughter (Kathy' daughter), Elisa (Spider) Prevatt showed up with her son Boomer (below right) and I decided to present him alongside his great grandmother.

Amos and Becky's granddaughter, Sara Kaitlyn Powell dropped in with her two sons. Rylan (below left) is a whirlwind of activity and Caiden (below right), already walking at the age of ten months, will soon be giving him a lot of competition.

After having gotten her two boys settled down, she spent some time on the floor in front of the TV with her grandmother, Becky, laughing at old photographs.

Left to right: Becky Price and Kaitlyn Powell
Meanwhile, Amos and I, enjoying tea in the breakfast nook, were on the verge of solutions to several of the world's major problems when Kathy interrupted us for the below photograph and we lost our train of thought.

Left to right: Amos Price and the author
We left Amos' late in the morning of 15 December, drove back to the Fort Lauderdale airport and turned in our rental car. The hotel shuttle then picked us up and delivered us to the Holiday Inn Express Cruise-Airport motel where we had stayed before the cruise.

Our flight to Phoenix was scheduled to take off at 0700 the next morning, so we ate dinner in our room and turned in early. The next morning we took the shuttle back to the airport, passed through security, boarded our flight and were in Phoenix at about 1008. The Ace Express Shuttle picked us up and delivered us to our door in time for us to pick up our mail and get a good start on those coming home from a trip chores which always follows an extended outage.

The entire trip was very enjoyable. As always I enjoyed the time spent aboard tremendously. As for shore excursions, I most enjoyed the time spent on Saint Thomas, possible because of the 62-year wait since my first aborted visit to the Island. The least enjoyable part of the cruise was the Half Moon Cay excursion. We both thought that was entirely too much like a movie set. I will admit, though, that our fellow passengers all seemed to think it was really great.

Travel was glitchless except for a very crowded check in at American Airlines on the way home. Although we had already checked in online and had pre-printed boarding passes, they insisted we use the kiosk to check in again and receive new boarding passes. One benefit of this was that our new passes classified us as pre-checked, meaning we took the short line through screening.

The cruise was great and I think we would both gladly do it again except that we have now “been there and done that.”

An added benefit of this cruise was that it was from Fort Lauderdale and, with several relatives in the area, we could combine it with a long-overdue visit with family members.
1https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mackinaw_WLBB-30_Azipod_thruster.jpg
2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turks_and_Caicos_Islands
3 Kelisi at the English language Wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons
4
6 http://tcmuseum.org/culture-history/salt-industry/
7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Prince
8 https://www.createspace.com/3781793
9 Ibid, page 60
10 https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/geos/rq.html
11 Ibid
12 Attribution: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rq.html
13 Cruise brochure published by Holland America
14 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castillo_San_Crist%C3%B3bal
15 By MJCdetroit (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castillo_San_Crist%C3%B3bal
17 Ibid
18 Picture taken by the U.S. National Park Service. See [www.cr.nps.gov/ worldheritage/fort.htm] (taken from en.wiki) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
19 https://www.createspace.com/3781793
20 https://www.createspace.com/3781793, pages 76-77
21 https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/vq.html
22 https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/vq.html
23 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_E._King_Airport
24 https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

25 http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/

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