Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Grand Cayman-----NOT!!!!

Weather that impeded accompanied us to Cozumel. At Grand Cayman, the port is not deep enough for ships to come in and dock. They must drop anchor out in the harbor and smaller boats, called 'tenders', shuttle guests back and forth between the ship and the shore.
HOWEVER, winds and waves made tendering unpredictable and unsafe. Usually there is a line of tender boats running back and forth like taxi cabs at O'hare airport and multiple tenders coming up to the gangplanks of the ship simultaneously. There were two other ships ahead of us in the harbor and 1 more yet trailing . Apparently on the leeward side of the island (the side protected from the winds) there are facilities for tendering also. They went around to that side, and so did we to check out the conditions. In the end, we blew off Grand Cayman and just started heading to Jamaica....at a snails pace. The activities crew had about 15 minutes notice that they had to figure out a way to enter 3,200 guests. Talk about pressure. I believe we are sailing at a blistering 10 knots, which I think is like 11 mph. Got time to kill. Can't pull into Jamaica until our appointed time.

1 comment:

Anita said...

Well, you're seeing interesting weather...