Our Last Day

A regular mystery occurred again on this cruise.  Our last stop was Bonaire and then we were too have two days at sea before arriving back in Fort Lauderdale.

Ship's resident entertainers in the Grand Foyer

Waiter Ahmed (left) from India with Celeo from Honduras

This time the group includes our wine waiter Olga from Kaliningrad

The distance from Kralendijk on Bonaire to Port Everglades is 1071 nautical miles.  The ship has a maximum speed of 25 knots.  That means it could sail the distance in just under 43 hours.

And so we return to Port Everglades at Fort Lauderdale

We left Kralendijk at 3pm on the Tuesday and docked at Port Everglades at 7am on the Friday.  That’s 64 hours, so 21 hours more than needed.

Now I know that the ship can’t do the whole stretch at full speed, but our average speed will have been just under 17 knots.  If we had left 4 hours later at 7pm the average speed needed would have been just under 18 knots.  Perhaps it’s a case of looking for fuel economy or perhaps giving the passengers longer in the casino (the ship’s casino can’t be open when the ship is docked).

The danger of taking a photo through what turns out to be tinted glass

We did indeed dock at 7am.  We were asked to be out of the cabin by 8am and that we should expect to leave the ship at 8.40am.

That proved to be about right and we then had quite a long wait to get through immigration. That in itself was quite quick – passport check, finger prints and a photo and we were through.  We had a short wait for the All Stars shuttle.  Never again on that one – a very cramped minibus which was extremely claustrophobic.  We got to the airport by 10am and were checked in and through security by 10.30am.

Then it was just a case of waiting for our 1pm flight to Newark New Jersey.  At around 11.45am we got a text message and then an announcement at the gate that our flight was going to be delayed because of air traffic control restricting flights in an out of Newark due to weather conditions.

When they confirmed that the delay was likely to be an hour and three quarters when our stopover time at Newark was only just under two hours, memories of the last time we flew out of here came flooding back.  The desk clerk assured us that there were later United Airlines flights out of Newark but there was no assurance that we would have a seat.