This morning, we were awoken by the voice of the Captain, giving everyone an update on the current weather, and stating that we were not going to be able to stay and visit Princess Cays. The winds were blowing about 30 knots from the Northwest, and the seas in the normally calm anchorage were running about 5 feet. This was going to make for a rough tender ride, and the conditions on the beach were also unsafe since the waves would be breaking along the shoreline in areas that normally are very calm on their beach.
We think that the Captain had to now that the conditions would not be acceptable before we ever arrived, but at least now, all of the passengers knew that an attempt had been made and that it was just not safe. Otherwise, the question of “how did they really know without going there” would have certainly been asked.
We departed the normal anchorage and started heading back to Ft. Lauderdale at a reduced speed since we now had about seven additional hours of time to get there, the time we normally would have spent at Princess Cays.
We eventually got up, showered and headed to breakfast at about 10:00 AM. Although the wind was blowing, there were mostly sunny skies with a few storms out on the horizon. We had not been able to tell about the weather until we got up on deck.
After breakfast, we headed to the bar on the back of the ship to have a Bloody Mary and a Bellini. One of our favorite bar tenders, Corne from South Africa was there and made us our drinks. We needed to kill some time while our Cabin Steward made up the room. We headed back to the room and put on our sunscreen, and then headed up to the pool deck. It was difficult to find a spot where the wind was not blowing too hard. It was better that the ship was going slower because the wind was already blowing against the direction we were heading, so the ships speed just would have made it worse than it already was. There were a few times that we got some significant wind gusts, and one time it blew some glasses of ice right off of one of the bar server’s trays while they were delivering them to a passenger near us.
There were some occasional showers, so we had to head to covered areas a few times, but the sunshine would reappear pretty quickly.
At about 1:30 PM, we got some lunch from the pizzeria (Stephanie) and hamburger grill (Chuck) and took them over to the Seaview Bar. We had a couple of drinks afterward and visited with some of the people we had met on this cruise. None of them were staying over for the second cruise so we would have to meet some new people on the next portion of our trip.
We decided to go to the boutique on the ship and check their prices for Segrams VO. We knew they had it from a previous visit, but nothing was marked with prices, and the sales persons had been too busy for us to wait and check. Today, there was a printed price list displayed so we were able to see the pricing for all of the liquor on that. They were allowing everyone to take their liquor purchases with them since this was the last day of the cruise, so we decided to purchase an additional bottle to ad to our inventory for the next cruise. The pricing was even much better than we had aid in St. Thomas, especially with the 10% discount we get for being an Elite passenger on the Captain’s Circle benefit. The price was about the equivalent of purchasing three drinks at the bar, well worth having it available. Even if we do not use all of our supplies on the second cruise, we will just take home any that remains. Better to have too much than too little, especially at the prices for drinks we would have to pay since we will not be on the all inclusive drink package for the second cruise.
We headed back to the cabin to do some packing so that we did not have to worry about it later. We only needed to pack things that were not on hangers, so it was not very difficult to get everything else into our suitcases. We had accumulated quite a collection of small bottles of water, along with some diet cokes, and all of the beverages that were included with our one time Elite Bar set up in the room. All the liquids made the bags pretty heavy, but easy to roll to an elevator and the short distance to the new room we will get tomorrow morning.
We cleaned up and headed to dinner at the buffet. After the marathon dinner last night in the dining room, we just did not feel like spending that much time eating tonight.
We then headed to the Vines wine bar and pre-purchased some bottles of wine for the next cruise sine we could get them for a 40% discount on the beverage package we currently have. The wine price with the discount ended up being about the same as if we purchased our own bottles, brought them on board, and paid the $15 corkage fee to drink them at dinner. In addition, we already knew the wine was good, we had certainly sampled enough during this cruise. They will just keep them at the bar, or we can take them to dinner. We were going to purchase two bottles of white wine and three bottles of red, but then opted to just get four bottles of red. However, the bartender Russell ended up giving us one bottle of the white wine, a Riesling, which was really nice. Of course, we had already given both of the bartenders at Vines tips since they had treated us really well during the cruise. Everyone was happy!
We got some wine to go and headed back to the room to finish packing. We have to be ready to move out of the room by 8:15 AM in the morning, so we will have to get up early so we can shower and get breakfast before then. No point in staying up too late on the last night of this part of the cruise since we get to start over again tomorrow on another ten days.
By the time we went to bed, the seas had calmed dramatically, and the weather forecast for Ft. Lauderdale was sunny skies and no rain, which will make it a nice transition day.
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