| Current mood: |  stressed |
Looks like we're stuck at sea...
Yeah, like that's a bad thing...
(Bear with me on this blurty update; I've had about 4 hours of sleep, but wanted to make sure that everyone was kept abreast of the status.)
The synopsis of the last 8 hours or so is an announcement was made at about 9 or 9:30 last night saying that, after careful consideration of all available information, the ship was going to race to the port of Miami to beat Jeanne -- we've been travelling at pretty close to top speed (20.3-20.5 knots, whatever that translates to in land speed) since some time yesterday. The problem is that the port was expected to close early in the afternoon, so the ship was supposed to immediately head back out to sea, even before the passengers fully disembarked. So, the disembarkation schedule was shifted back by like two hours...
Brief overview of the disemabarkation process. At time zero (normally 7 or 7:30, I believe), US citizens who can carry all of their own luggage are allowed to disembark on an accelerated schedule. Then one hour later the accelerated disembarkation stops, and immigration begins. At this point, everyone that's left on the ship is in a holding pattern while non-US citizens are processed, which usually takes about an hour, but allegedly some pokey Canucks in the past have held up the show while Carnival employees hunted them down. So, anyway, after immigration is complete, then normal disembarkation can begin. In the normal disembarkation, you set out your luggage the night before, and passengers are called in the morning, after immigration, on a per-deck basis. You say you don't have anything interesting to declare, leave the ship, find your luggage, and you're on your way. If you don't have a morning flight, or if you're just a morning person in general, the accelerated disembarkation lets you off early before everyone else. But if you're not a morning person (hand shoots up into the air), then you can stick around on the ship, have some breakfast, put together some food to take with you for later in the day, and just take a more leisurely pace in general.
The hurricane threw a few wrenches in those works...
To make matters worse, not only were we going to be shifting the accelerated disembarkation to the 5:30 to 6:30 block, but there were expected to be a number of other ships a tiny bit later in the morning that were going to try to quickly dump their passengers onto the pier so the ships could then flee back out to sea. So, the choices at hand were either to disembark with all of our luggage under our arms at 5:30 to 6:30 (sunrise is at 7:19AM, by the way), or to wait until 7:30 or 8AM to try to figure out where our eight pieces of luggage are, in the huge mass of people at the pier that had been expected to arrive. Either way, we'd need transportation to Fort Lauderdale, so it would probably be safest to get to the pier as soon as possible in this case to make sure we can get out of Miami before the hurricane hits. All this with a 4-year-old and a 6.5-year old in tow, that have never before in their lives gotten up this early.
Suffice it to say, the tone last night while finishing packing (we did 90% of the packing during the day yesterday) was rather somber... Heather wasn't figuring on going to sleep (but it's just as well she did anyway), and I set a wake-up call for 4:30.
I woke up at about 4AM, and noticed that we were still travelling at top speed, but the seas were very rough. The ship's stabilizers are interesting. You can't really tell that we were plowing through huge waves, but for the last 8 hours you could feel the ship rocking from side-to-side. I guess it's probably the prevailing westerlies trying to knock the ship over as we travelled north, but that's just a guess on my part. Anyway... I called down to the front desk to ask what the status is, and even though we were still racing toward Miami, we were still due to disembark in an hour-and-a-half.
So, I started to take a shower, dreading waking the kids up in an hour, but we had to do what we had to do. While in the shower, I heard the PA system announcement tone, and heard a voice conveying a message, but the speaker is in the stateroom and I had the water running, so I couldn't make out the details. I knew that Heather would hear it, so I just continued what I was doing. A moment later I felt the ship make a hard turn, and Heather informed me that the port of Miami had been closed, and that we were heading back out to sea...
I was already awake (but I hope I can fall back asleep at this point for a few hours), so I decided to grab a bite of breakfast (the breakfast buffet opened at 4AM this morning) and post an update to the blurty... I came up on deck, to the 12th floor, to check to see if we were close enough to Miami to pick up a cell signal, but no luck. I picked up a couple signals from other providers, but not T-Mobile. It was mildly amusing to see the hundred or so people wandering around the deck looking for a signal at this hour of the morning...
While eating my breakfast, I spoke with a couple women that are part of the 200-something geneology group, and they noted that their flights had been cancelled as of like 1 or 2AM this morning, so it's just as well that the ship head back out to sea, or there would be a lot of people stuck in Florida with no way out. I shudder to think of having two half-awake children with no adequate transportation from Miami to Fort Lauderdale, with a hurricane bearing down at us...
Anyway, not sure what the next 24-48 hours has in store for us. We're not doing much of anything until the port opens. We were fortunate enough to have booked our flights to and from Florida with a couple days slop, which has paid off it looks like. The flight down to Floriday was delayed by a day due to Ivan, and now with Jeanne making a mess of things, it's a good thing we're not supposed to be flying back until Monday.
We're going to need someone to call and confirm the hotel reservations for us, since the delay on Thursday ended up resulting in a cancelled hotel room (good thing we checked when we arrived in Fort Lauderdale, and rebooked another hotel), so our hotel reservations in Fort Lauderdale are presumably in jeapordy. I'll convey this information to someone a little later today.
Err... Good night?
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 | Re: Hotel
 _quin
2004-09-25 14:22
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Chris,
I'll check back here on the hours. You can post the reservation info here and I'll check for you.....or you can IM it to me. It's now 2:20, so I'll check again at 3. Good luck. I hope all works out. From what Carnival's website says, you'll be disembarking Monday morning, so you may not even need the hotel, anyway. I'll double check and confirm that, as well.
See you soon
Kevin(Reply to this) (Thread) |
| Follow-Up
_quin
2004-09-25 14:26
(link) |
Here's what is on Carnival's website, right now:
Weather Update
(9/25/04 11:30 AM EST) – Carnival is closely monitoring Hurricane Jeanne and all other weather conditions that could impact any of our sailings. The safety of our guests remains our number one priority.
Presently Hurricane Jeanne has impacted the following cruises:
DEPARTING FROM MIAMI:
CARNIVAL TRIUMPH:
The 7 Day cruise that departed on Sept. 18 will return to Miami on Mon., Sept. 27.
The 7 Day cruise scheduled to depart Sat., September 25, 2004 has changed to a 5 Day Western Caribbean cruise, visiting Progreso and Cozumel, departing on Mon., September 27, 2004. Guests booked on this sailing will receive 30% off of their cruise rate and $100 per person onboard credit.
Hope that helps.
Kevin(Reply to this) (Thread) |
| One more question
_quin
2004-09-26 11:34
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Did you happen to leave a barn key behind? I thought I'd seen a note to that effect but I didn't see it this morning while shooting up the cat. Wanted to grab the vaccuum that I'd brought over, out of there.
TTYS
Kevin(Reply to this) (Thread) |
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