Category: Carefree Caribbean

Charlotte Amalie, Virgin Islands US
Friday, March 21st
Day at sea

This morning I popped right out of bed at 7 and was in the gym before 7:30. Don’t know what the deal with that was! I got on an elliptical planning to do 45-60 minutes. These ellipticals have their own little TV screen, so I plugged in my headphones and surfed for something to watch. There was a movie, “Letters from Juliet” just starting. It was the perfect workout movie! Romantic comedy and entertaining enough to make me forget about my knees. Two hours+ later when the movie ended, I got off and hobbled away.

Got back to the cabin just as Jeff was leaving for a class on photographic lighting. He went to the talk and I took my IPad to sit in a lovely seating area to write. There was a trivia contest going on in the lounge next to me and I did quite well. (It was the same contest they held last week.) Haha

Jeff said the first part of the talk was basically a commercial to book a photographic sitting, but the rest covered some basic light settings and options. He went up to the gym and worked out on the treadmill for an hour and did weights for another 30 minutes. I napped. 🙂 What a great day!

Tonight is the first formal night of this 10 day leg. We got dressed up (Sorry, no photos again!) this is the Captain’s Champagne waterfall night…free champagne. Hooray!

At dinner we shared the table with a couple from Vancouver and an older couple from Rochester, New York, Ray and Carol. The guy from Vancouver, Curt, was about 30 sheets to the wind and completely obnoxious. Jeff didn’t think he was that bad, but he wasn’t sitting next to him! It was awful. About 1/2 through dinner he ordered shots of Jagermeister for us all. In a different, say a less formal, rowdier environment that would have been a nice gesture. His wife was a little ticked, I think. He and she left dinner before dessert and none of us were unhappy to see them go. Ray and Carol were very interesting – as we discovered now that we could have a conversation. Ray is retired from Xerox and was telling us about the economic conditions in Rochester. With layoffs at Xerox, GM and HP, and even though their area lost 40k jobs they never had unemployment over 7.5% because of all the start up companies people began after losing their jobs. Good conversations.

After dinner we went back to our cabin. The stargazing is good now that the moon is waning and on the other side of the ship. So many stars; it is easy to see how they would have guided the sea faring sailors so long ago…

Euler Island, Bahamas
Princess Cay
Thursday, March 20th, 2014

The Bahamian island of Eleuthera is 100 miles long and only 2 miles wide! It is kind of a long stick floating in the Atlantic. Princess Cay makes up 30 acres of the island. This area of the Bahamas is sub-tropical with about 340 days of sunshine a year. And this is one of those sun shiny days! We started our day with a workout – Jeff on the treadmill and weights while I did 3 miles around the deck. I would have done my usual 5 miles, but part of the Promenade was blocked off and it was crowded because of that. We had tried to sign up for two shore excursions; one on Grenada and one on Bonaire but they were both filled up. We are #1 on the wait list for one and #2 on the wait list for the other, so we go down to the excursion desk to choose other tours. It’s a bummer because the one we wanted on Grenada goes to a couple of places including a nutmeg processing operation. The tour that is our alternate choice doesn’t do that – it goes to a rum distillery instead. I really had my heart set on the spice thing. We took the tender to Princess Cay around 11. Snorkeled a bit – it was pretty good –

then lounged around in our “clamshell” which is kind of like a 3 sided conical tent – keeps the sun off and comes with 2 lounge chairs. Very relaxing. We wandered over to the grill for lunch – since this is a Princess beach all the food is free. We buy a bucket of beer and lounge around more – listening to Jimmy Buffet’s “Songs You Know by Heart.”

Did I tell you that we travel not only with a little portable safe, but also with a small Bluetooth speaker? All of our music is on Jeff’s iphone and with our little speaker we can easily entertain ourselves. We have a couple of beers, pack up the rest and head back to the boat around 2:30.

What a different experience from Princess Cay 2 days ago! After dinner we catch the ventriloquist act, Mark Merchant. He was really good and we hope to see him again. Best entertainment we’ve had this cruise!

Fort Lauderdale, FL
March 19th
Ft. Lauderdale – again

Today is the midpoint of our vacation and we are so happy to have another 10 days on the Emerald Princess.

After being up so late last night, we really did get up at 6am to watched as we sailed into port. It’s odd to use the term “sailed” because obviously our ship doesn’t have a single sail. I don’t think we are steaming either and I’m definitely not rowing! “Sail” must be the correct term.

Because we are not disembarking in Ft. Lauderdale, we are considered “in transit”. Yesterday we got new cabin cards (keys) and little slips of paper printed “In Transit”. We do want to disembark and we can get off any time and get back on at our leisure. The passengers in transit who don’t want to go into Ft Lauderdale, are all escorted off the ship at 10:30, walked through customs and then get right back on board. The entire ship has to be cleared of passengers.

Jeff and I went to one of the ship’s restaurants for breakfast – this is the first time this trip we’ve had a dining room breakfast because we either don’t get up early enough or don’t want to spend the time. It is also a “temptation” area as the waiters keep coming around with breads and muffins – I don’t need to have that stuff presented to me!

Almost all the cabins are empty now (those with the open doors are being cleaned) and we go exploring. We go look at the suites – bigger than our mini-suite obviously – but neither of us really likes the layout – though if we got upgraded to one we probably wouldn’t turn it down! We check out the interior cabins – definitely not for us! Obstructed view cabins where the lifeboat is the view out of your window. As we walk by one cabin we spot 2 small bottles of champagne sitting on the counter. The owners have clearly left it and it’s still cold. Hey, look, this one fits in my pocket! That one fits in your pocket! Off we scurry with our booty. (I love champagne)

Our plan for Ft Lauderdale is simple – I want to upload my blog entries so far, and we have a little restocking to do. We grab our passports, I-pads, phones, cruise cards, in transit passes and head for the gangway. After a short wait we clear customs.

First things first – where can we find free Internet? Naturally being who we are we think of a library, but at the same time, in unison, we say “Starbucks!” Obviously there are more Starbucks readily available than libraries so we walk there. Jeff made some phones calls while I uploaded text and photos for this blog then I made a few phone calls and we both checked email. After 3 hours and WAY too many cups of coffee, we packed up and went to the grocery store.

Let’s see, we definitely don’t need any food! But I did buy a Reese’s peanut butter cup (feeling virtuous for turning down those lovely muffins at breakfast). Picked up some coke and tonic water, 2 bottles of wine, fresh flowers, and other incidentals. Loaded down we walk back to the pier. It’s about an hour before sail-away and there are NO lines to get on board!! Usually boarding is a huge zoo because everyone shows up at noon – this is much nicer.

Back in our cabin we see that our wine steward has left us two glasses of champagne – what a nice surprise and a great way to start our next cruise.

Charlotte Amalie, Virgin Islands US
Tuesday, March 18th
Princess Cay

Princess Cay is, as I mentioned earlier in this blog, owned by Princess Cruises – it is actually part of Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas. We are looking forward to a fun day and have rented a little pop-up cabana to shade us when we’re done snorkeling. We had decided last night to sleep in, have a leisurely breakfast and then catch the tender to shore.

We were awakened at 7 by an announcement from the bridge. The captain said because of high surf, the tenders would not be running so we’re going to have an unexpected sea day. Jeff said “He woke us up to tell us there’s no reason to wake up early!” Bummer! We were looking forward to snorkeling again.

We check the “Princess Patter” which is the ship’s daily newsletter (you don’t think I just know all that navigation stuff, do you??) which lists the day’s activities. Not much there as they planned on almost everyone going ashore. Soon the announcement came that there would be another edition put out very soon. They must have quite the printing operation on board. Yep, about 45 minutes later new daily schedules were delivered…it’s a testament to their organizational skills that they could quickly pull together a multitude of daily activities on the fly like that.

Jeff and I went to the Princess Theater to watch the movie “August, Osage County.” Unfortunately when they started the movie the audio was for a travelogue for New Hampshire. What a riot! Now we have a broken movie! Hahaha. Eventually they got it straightened out. The movie was powerful (in an incredibly dysfunctional way). Not exactly vacation fare, but it was good.

We walked our 5 miles around the Promenade Deck, changed clothes (I swear we change clothes 3-4 times a day!) and met Al and Nancy for drinks and hors du’voeres. Jeff and Al became co-conspirators in bootlegging! You can buy bottles of hard liquor (tax and duty free) on the boat, but you can’t take it back to your cabin unless it is the last night of the cruise and you’re getting off the next day. Al and Jeff go to the store – Al buys us a bottle AND he got a 20% discount because he’s an elite member, then we follow Al and Nancy back to their room. Jeff pays Al and we get our bottle. Because they are Elite members, Al and Nancy also get a free minibar setup. Al says that Nancy always packs up those 8 little bottles and takes them home. Apparently they have a big cardboard box filled with little booze bottles because she doesn’t want them to go to waste! So, Nancy grabs those 8 mini bottles, we put them in our pockets, all four of us laughing like naughty kids, and head back to our room. We did exchange email and snail mail addresses. I’m going to send them a postcard on our next 10 days.

After dropping our booty off in the cabin, we changed (AGAIN) and went up to “Movies Under the Stars” to watch the second Hunger Games movie. We’ve seen it before, and thought it would be a good one to watch outside. We had popcorn and a cookie, shared a hot dog and an order of fries for a decidedly not healthy dinner!

After the movie, we wandered back to the Princess Theater to hear Antonio Salci, a pianist. His show didn’t start until 10:30…way past my bedtime. He was good – very high energy and appreciative of those in the theatre. This is the last night of our first 10 day cruise and most of the passengers have to have their luggage outside their doors, so events tonight are less crowded than normal.

Before we turn in we set our alarm for very early – we want to be on our balcony as the ship sails into Ft. Lauderdale…

Charlotte Amalie, Virgin Islands US
Monday, March 17th
At Sea

After leaving St. Thomas, Emerald Princess went through the Virgin Passage, passing Island Culebrita, then northwest throughout the Nares Abyssal Plain (North Atlantic Ocean) passed Puerto Rico.

Hmmm…not sure what I’ve done; maybe struggled against the current pool too much yesterday but today I have a very stiff, sore neck. The kind of stiff neck where you have to turn your whole upper body instead of just your head to look sideways.

It’s St. Patrick’s Day! I get out the big shamrock I bought at the dollar store and (duct) tape it to our cabin door. I’m wearing shorts, a long sleeved white oxford shirt – shirt sleeves rolled up and a pair of bright green suspenders and socks. Jeff has on the St. Patrick’s shirt he picked up at Goodwill before we left home. We are prepared and festive.

Instead of swimming, I’m going to walk with Jeff on the Promenade deck. As we go through the hallway we see a few other decorated doors and people sporting St. Paddy’s Day attire. Very fun!

We walk 5 miles and pretty much every 2 minutes I say “oh, wow” because I am so taken with the ocean, the waves, the sun… I like to think about those who sailed these waters long ago and how brave they must have been.

After walking we return to relax in the cabin. I’ve finished “Saving Fish from Drowning” and enjoyed it very much.

Before dinner we go down to the Piazza which is a large atrium like area. There is a lot of seating, glass elevators, a coffee bar and little International Cafe. We sit and listen to the “Calibri Duo”. One man is playing the violin, the other, an accordion. They are really good – but honestly, what a bizarre duo. Who writes music for violin and accordion?? Never know what kind of entertainment you might happen upon…

Off to dinner and then a relaxing evening in our cabin. We have such a good time on the boat and enjoy our At Sea days. This is our last day at sea for this 10 days as tomorrow we’ll be at Princess Cay.

Charlotte Amalie
Virgin Islands US
Sunday, March 16th

Last night we sailed through the Caribbean Sea, passed St. Croix to St. Thomas.

This is the only port on which Jeff and I have arranged an excursion with Princess. We’ve been to St. Thomas before and that time we took a cab to a ferry, took a ferry over to St. John’s and snorkeled – then reversed the process to get back to the ship. This time though, we are not in port as long and thought we’d use some of our free cabin credit and go to Trunk Bay on a Princess excursion. We’re so happy that we had decided earlier to do this because if we had to wait to be tendered in there would not be enough time for us to do much of anything on our own.

We made our way to the meeting point on the ship for our excursion and were told that because of poor conditions the snorkeling part of the day had been cancelled. Happily we have our own equipment and knowing Trunk Bay is a public beach knew we could snorkel if we chose too. But by the time we left on the tender and got to shore on St. Thomas, conditions had apparently worsened to the point that the entire beach portion of the trip was cancelled.

So, let’s review… Broken airplane, broken boat, broken beach?? Wild!

Our choice was to return our tickets for a full refund, or to take the trip over to St. John’s, be dropped off to shop, etc., and get picked up 3 hours later. Since we aren’t really shoppers, we opted out. But here we were on St. Thomas carrying our snorkeling gear and beach bag and….it starts to POUR!! In seconds we were totally drenched. Oh well, since we were already soaked, we decided to make the best of things and walked (quite a ways) over to where to boat would normally have docked. It was a long, WET walk! But honestly, it was worth it. We came upon a farmer’s market. I bought some locally made ginger granola and, from a woman who used to live in Colorado (!), some home sewn hair things. They are very cute and I bought two as gifts. This is the first time I’m sorry I had all of my hair cut off right before the cruise as I would have enjoyed wearing one. She (her name is Cindi) and I chatted a bit. We exchanged email addresses and I promised to send her my recipe for dog biscuits. She and her husband live above Megan’s Bay and she said this morning there was a huge surge that came through so it was good we hadn’t gone snorkeling as the water was really churned up.

We stopped to check the taxi schedule because in our second ten days we’ll be back to St. Thomas (it is the only port we repeat) and we are making plans on what to do then. Hope the thrusters will be repaired by then.

We walked back to town and man! it started to pour rain again! I’m drenched down to my swimsuit. We explored some alleys, went to the historic bakery district but everything was closed up tight. Oh, duh, it’s Sunday – the only shops open are the tourist ones. We catch a tender and get back to the boat about 1:30.

I figure I’m already soaked and since I was wearing my swimsuit under my clothes, I go right up to the current pool and swam 1/2 mile.

This is our second formal night. After getting all dressed up, we went up to the special hors d’oevres and met a couple, Al and Nancy Stumpf. I think we have made friends for life! Al looks like Bob Newhart did but is actually 82 years old. We just couldn’t believe it. They have done a LOT of cruising with Princess and are at the highest level. It totally threw us when they started talking about Facebook and email…turns out Al was very early in the IT profession and has great pre-Internet stories and is very techie. We really, really like them.

We had dinner tonight with a couple from Australia (very nice), a couple from Sweden (very quiet as they struggled a little bit with English) and a couple from Denver. The woman from Denver was too ANNOYING for words!!! She had a horrible loud braying voice, dominated the conversation and was an awful know-it-all. The Australian guy, Ian, was seated next to me and at one point he looked at me and crossed his eyes like “can you believe her?”. Turns out Ian and his wife, Teresa, are spending 3 weeks after the cruise driving across the US. Braying lady was telling them they must do this and that, blah, blah, blah. I gave Teresa our email and address and invited them to contact us if they found themselves in Colorado. It would be fun to see them again.

Service was a little slow in the dining room and as it turned out all of us were going to see “Blame it on the Boogie” in the Princess Theatre. Everyone at the table skipped dessert and headed for the show. Jeff and I made a detour to our room for glasses of wine to take with (and to ensure we would not be seated anywhere near that Colorado couple. hahaha.)

Not the very best day because of the weather and tendering…but dressing up was fun, meeting Al and Nancy was great – go with the flow and have a great time.

Basseterre, Saint Kitts
Saturday, March 15th
St Kitts

Jeff and I have been to St. Kitts before; in fact, one of my favorite vacation photos of us is at Brimstone Hill Fortress.

Early this morning we were awakened by the Captain making an announcement from the bridge which is unusual. He announced that only one of the ship’s six thrusters were working. Thrusters are the things that move the ship sideways and are important for moving to and away from the dock. As a result, we would not be tying up at the port in St. Kitts, but would be tendered in.

This wasn’t a problem for us as we hadn’t made any plans except just wandering around town, but there was lots of hubbub as the lifeboats were lowered. To get to shore you have to get a tender ticket and through the day they call the numbers. It’s interesting that when they make the announcements they always call the lifeboats “pontoons.” They are definitely not pontoons, but that or “tender” probably sounds better than telling people to get into the lifeboats.

We waited until the crush of those going ashore was lessened and made our way to St. Kitts. Walked around town and took some photos.

The “Circus” is a big circle and with the traffic and pedestrians it does indeed resemble a circus.

After a while we decided we were really hungry…there were plenty of the normal tourist restaurants, but that grilled chicken smelled so good! You guessed it – we went back to one of the street grills and bought a chunk of chicken to eat.  It came with a piece of garlic bread. We then made our way to an outdoor cafe and ordered a local beer. The chicken was phenomenal!!! $4 U.S. for an excellent local lunch.

This is what vacation is all about…

Back on the ship via tender I spent the afternoon reading while Jeff napped then we went to the gym and worked out.

Announcement from the captain -two of the six thrusters are fixed. Progress, but for our stop in St. Thomas tomorrow we will be tendered into shore.

Always an adventure.

Bridgetown, Barbados
Friday, March 14, 2014
Barbados

After our ship left St. Lucia yesterday, we sailed south between St. Lucia and St. Vincent, south of Cape Moule a Chique. We went southeast across the Tobago Basin to Barbados.

Though we’ve never been to Barbados, and not knowing anything at all about it (I’ve always thought of it as kind of scary) we decide to do our own thing. We even have a plan. Yes, we are slow learners. Hahaha!

After a quick breakfast of bagels and peanut butter and plain yogurt and some fruit, we walked off the ship around 9am. It was only a 10 minute walk to the bus depot.

After a short wait, we hopped a bus to Holetown – bus fare $1 US each. (This bus also goes to “Pie Town” and that sounded very tempting!) We rode a “government” bus – just a normal big bus.

Get on, put your money in the box, get your ticket. The city buses are blue with yellow stripes. We asked the driver to let us out at Coral Reef Resort. All beaches in Barbados are public and we figured that if we snorkeled at a resort there would be amenities (i.e. beer!).  45 minutes later we got off the bus, the driver had actually bypassed the bus stop to drop us right at the resort entrance and we walked to the resort’s security gate. The security guy was super helpful in giving us directions and off we went. Walked past the dive shop, all the vacationers lounging in their beach chairs and staked out a small bit of sand as our own.

It was wonderful! The snorkeling was very good and we were in the water for about an hour. Got out and watched 2 large catamarans pull up in front of us. You know you’ve picked a good spot if this is where the boat tours stop. We were cozy in our spot, and once I was dry I decided to get back in the water. It was just great! I’ve included one of my photos of a large school of blue Tangs.

All too soon, it was time to head back to the ship. Back to the bus stop…the bus stop signs are pretty funny. They say “Bus Stop, Out Of Town” or “Bus Stop, To Town.” No confusion there. 

As we waited at the bus stop a number of bright yellow large-ish minivans with blue stripes came by. Jeff asked someone waiting with us the difference between the two busses. The blue with yellow stripe busses are, as I said, run by the government and those employees are salaried. The yellow with blue stripe busses are private – running the same routes as the others for the same price – but they get paid by passenger. THAT explained why they were kind of hustling to get people on.

After several passed by, we got on a yellow bus.

OMG!! It was like riding the Night Bus in a Harry Potter movie!! You got on and before you could think, you were zooming down the road. We flung ourselves into a seat, gave a guy $1 each. He put it in a bowl at the front of the bus – guess he’ll remember that we paid. There was rasta rap BLARING from the front of the bus – I was pretty sure my eardrums were going to break! When we stopped, we STOPPED. Slamming on of brakes, everyone lurching forward. I would not have been a bit surprised to see trees or buildings flinging themselves out of the way – you Harry Potter fans will know what I mean. We were thrilled to see the bus terminal. What a great adventure!

We walked back to the port and stopped at a bar for a local beer – we deserved it! The local beer here is “Banks.”  You can see that Gumby enjoyed his immensely.

Tonight is the Captain’s Circle party – meet the captain, free booze – it is a thank you party for returning Princess sailors. We shared our table with a British couple – who currently live in Alabama. They regaled us with great stories of snorkeling in Fiji and French Polynesia.

It was a great day.

Castries, Saint Lucia
Thursday, March 13, 2014
St. Lucia

Jeff and I have never been to St. Lucia so we decide instead of taking an organized tour we’ll strike out on our own and go snorkeling.

We wend our way off the boat through the hordes hawking tours and taxis. We do stop to ask a cabbie how much the fare would be to Anse-La Raye. Our Fodors tells us that there is excellent snorkeling there. “$120. US” is his answer. When we laugh, he drops it to $100. We laugh again and tell him, “No, thanks, we’ll take the bus.” He says “There in no bus to Anse-La Raye.” I immediately retort, “Oh, yes there is, right across from the police station!”
It helps to have done your homework ahead of time…

We walk to the bus stop, which is actually quite a ways and it’s hot. As we stand there, a cab driver comes over to tell us that we may be waiting awhile as the bus doesn’t leave until it is full. Not sure if he is bs-ing us or not, we ask him how much he would charge to take us – $20. We clarify that that is $20 US and that’s for the cab, not per person. Yes and yes, so we climb in.

Holy mackerel! St. Lucia is twisty and hilly! Turns out that our driver, Quincy, is from Anse-La Raye and that it is a nice fishing village. He stops along the way to run into the market and buy some Windex and off we continue. We get to Anse-La Raye in about 45 minutes, and arrange for Quincy to come back in 3 hours (at 2 pm) to pick us up. We get out of the cab and head for the beach…except this isn’t really a beach. I mean the ocean is there, there is sand and a few colorful fishing boats pulled up on shore and 5 or 6 dogs sleeping in the sand, but there is no one in the water, no tourists at all. “This isn’t right” we think. I point out a small protected cove to Jeff “Maybe we could try there” I suggested. We wander that way. A man steps out of the shadow of a building and stops us. He saw our snorkeling gear and tells us “The water is very dirty. Most people in the village don’t have flush toilets. You don’t want to get in this water.” Well, ****, now what?

We go back to the street and see a couple of policemen. I ask if there is a dive shop in town. “No, no, this is a fishing village”. We want to be over on the point and he gestures out to sea to a point about 5 miles away. He calls to a kid and asks if he’ll take us in his boat to the point. “Sure, sure. $60 US” “No thank you” we say, he drop his price to $50. I told him that it costs us only $20 to get from Castries but he doesn’t budge.

The policeman comes back and we follow him into a combination shop/bar and he calls to the owner.

Now, the owner was incredible in his stereotypical-ness! He was a wither guy, long gray rasta hair and beard, one armed – we just KNEW he had been a pirate in some incarnation. He and the cop started talking about our options. Rasta man was kind of talking to himself, “no, that would be too expensive” “No, that is not a good solution…” Then it occurred to me that we had passed Margit Bay on our way to Anse La Raye. Margit Bay is a very popular place and is where the original Dr. Doolittle movie was filmed. “Maybe if we could get to Margit Bay?” I suggest. Rasta man calls his son – “There are some people here at the shop who need a ride, please come get them.” Okay, now we have a plan. We chat for a while with the cop and rasta man. After about 5 minutes he calls his son again “Where are you? These people are waiting!” We couldn’t believe how wonderful this guy was.

Pretty soon his son pulls up in the family car…we tell the cop, rasta man and rasta man’s son to please tell Quincy, our cab driver, to come to Margit Bay to get us. Quincy is from that village so they know him. We pile into the car and very shortly are at Margit. The son, who has a degree in hospitality and tourism and works at the Sandals resort(!), drops us off and never says anything about money. Jeff gave him $10 for getting out of bed and rescuing us.

At Margit Bay, one side is shops and yachts and you take a VERY short ferry ride (literally about 100 yards) to the beach. People were getting on the boat so we scurried aboard. We cast off…I said something about our travails and how happy we were to finally be at the beach. The pilot stopped the boat. “This boat isn’t going to the beach. This is a tour going to the Pitons. That will be $40 each US!!” Jeff asked “What’s the stowaway rate?” but there wasn’t one, so our pilot whistled for the ferry, and we climbed from one boat to the other!

Some days are just like that! The snorkeling was “okay”

We relaxed on the beach, had a couple of beers and soon it was time to hope that Quincy the cab driver had gotten our message. We decided to wait an extra 1/2 hour or until 2:30 and if he didn’t show we’d take another cab. Sure enough, 2:20 – here comes Quincy. We told him the whole tale with much laughing. He said if we had mentioned snorkeling he would have taken us to some place – which was actually the place outside Anse-La Raye in the book!

We had Quincy drop us off back where he picked us up. We walked to a liquor store because though you can’t take liquor on the ship, we had a plan – and two empty water bottles…

We bought a small bottle of gin and were quietly deciding how to discretely pour it into our water bottles (there was a cop in the store). The cashier overheard us and said “Oh, I can do that for you!” She opened the gin and began filling a water bottle. The cop said “Don’t fill it full, make the 1/2 and 1/2 so it doesn’t look suspicious!” Then Quincy walked in and the 3 of us burst out laughing.

A good story, right? Getting off the beaten path can be a little nerve wracking – you just need to keep your sense of humor!

As we sailed out of St. Lucia, we noticed the island’s airstrip…yikes! Airplanes take off and land right off the water (and over the ships).