Aboard Coral Princess

Sunday, November 29, 2015

On Wednesday 25 November, we got underway about 1730. Our next scheduled stop was San Juan Del Sur in Nicaragua.

It is quite a haul from Cabo San Lucas to Nicaragua about 1800 nautical miles and we had three and a half days to get there. Because of this Andrea Poggi, our captain, rang up twenty one knots. Up until now, we had been cruising at about seventeen knots. Over twenty knots, these big cruise ships creak, shimmy and groan a lot.

To digress for a moment, Coral Princess is relatively new, twelve years old, she is 965 feet long and displaces 91,627 tons. As a comparison, Constellation the aircraft carrier I was stationed on in 1963-64 displaced 84,000 tons, was over 1,000 feet long and had a three acre flight deck and she was a big SOB. At 0500 the air group would go to flight quarters  and ring up forty knots and stay there until 2300 and she rode smoother than a cruise ship at half that speed. USS Waddell, the destroyer I was a plank owner on was only 4,500 tons. Because of her relative smallness, she pitched and rolled a lot more but she didn't shake or shudder unless she was taking green water over the signal bridge.

OK, I'm done for now and will climb off of my soapbox.

Thursday was Thanksgiving and we had diner in the Bordeaux dining room. I had the standard turkey with stuffing meal and Jamie had Dover Sole. FYI, after having an absolutely wretched "Captains Feast" in South Dakota I vowed never to have seafood more than 500 miles from the ocean. Also part of the same vow, as God is my witness,   was to never have Mexican food outside of  California, Arizona, New Mexico or Texas. The food aboard this Princess ship is very good and we are now in a food rut. Breakfast of coffee, croissants with butter and orange marmalade, yogurt and Special K is brought in every morning by room service. About 1300, we stroll up to the Horizon court buffet for lunch with a most spectacular 270 degree view one deck over the bridge. Dinner is at a different venue every evening.

The weather since we left Cabo San Lucas is sultry. Eighty six degrees F and a bit more humid since California and Mexico.

This morning, Sunday, we anchored at San Juan Del Sur Nicaragua at 0700. One could hear the wind howling outside and when we went out on the balcony you could see whitecaps everywhere. After about an hour, Captain Poggi got on the 1MC and told us that it was just too windy to take people to the beach in the tenders. We got a bunch of photos of Nicaragua and then the anchor was weighed and we set out for Puntarenas Costa Rica. Being we left at 0800 instead of  1800 we are now ten hours ahead of schedule so we are now drifting along at what looks like four knots so we get to Puntarenas at about 0700. Puntarenas has a pier so there is no fear of people getting dumped into the drink when lightering from a tender.

Well that's all the news that's fit to print for now, so I believe I'll take a short nap now.