Two Ports, No Waiting

On Sunday we arrived in St. Maarten to find that we were the only ship in town. A good thing from the crowd perspective, but many passengers were wondering if any of the shops would be open. After all, this was the first opportunity for most people to be able to flex the credit cards in $US at Caribbean-style prices!

As we’ve been here numerous times, we left the touring to the ‘newbies’.

The Golden Eagle Catamaran coming back from her tour to Tintamare Island for snorkeling and beach time.

We left the ship to wander around a bit, and, yes, to do some browsing. Quite a few of the shops in the pierside plaza were closed when we left the ship, so we took the water taxi to ‘downtown’ Philipsburg, where we found a little more activity, and did manage to get the couple of things we were looking for. Still, it was almost eerily quiet and definitely not what we have come to expect from our previous visits here.

The local government is in the process of building new pier facilities and basically doubling the size of the cruise terminal in preparation for the arrival of Oasis of the Seas, Royal Caribbean’s 210,000 tonne monster, which goes into service in December. Throughout our visit, we couldn’t help wondering what will happen when Oasis arrives for her first scheduled visit. Fully loaded, she carries 6,200 passengers and about 2,500 crew (about 1/3 of whom would probably get some time off). She makes her first visit December 9th and we found out from one of the shop staff, she’ll be in with four other ships that day. Consider the equivalent population of a small town, about 15,000 cruise passengers, all ready to shop, descending on tiny Philpsburg..... Makes us kind of glad we will both be at work that day!!!!!

Getting back to the ship, we did our laps around the Promenade Deck and took some reading time. We had the most beautiful sunset of the trip so far, reflected in the clouds over the island.

The officers on the Bridge Wing at sailaway

It wasn’t until Antigua that we saw some really awesome Caribbean weather. Our overnight sail of 88 miles was uneventful, and yesterday dawned hot and humid. We didn’t even leave the ship, looking forward to a pool day. After doing our laps and 45 minutes in the gym in the morning, we put on our bathing suits and went up to check out the new layout and furniture on the pool deck. This furniture was only installed in Montreal just before we boarded for the President’s Cruise, and really hasn’t had a workout yet. Well, we fixed THAT. If, of course, you consider four and a half hours of making like a “deck potato” giving it a “workout”!!

Larry testing the new Jacuzzi

Trying out the new tile 'lounges' on the pool's edge.

There were seriously dark clouds hanging around just off the island most of the morning, and about mid-afternoon, Larry noticed some people on the Sun Deck of the Celebrity Mercury, in port on the other side of our wharf, looking out at something. That something turned out to be a waterspout - the ocean equivalent of a tornado! We managed to get a couple of photos of it before it disappeared. Some of our ship staff had been having a beach day and had actually seen four waterspouts form and die out while they were out. The weather moved in over the island after that and we had quite the thunderstorm, with lightning that carried on until well into the evening, for several hours after we sailed. Good thing we were going in the opposite direction!

The waterspout is that line coming down to the right of centre.