LakeRooseveltBrews

Being a nerdy engineer, when the Captain announced we were skipping Puerto Plata at 9am on Feb 18th and sailing straight on to Miami, I wanted to consider this interesting implication I will discuss here and that is how much less fuel Riviera will burn in the journey home. The instant the announcement was made, I checked the Navigation Display. It said there were 701 nautical miles to Miami. By foregoing stopping at Puerto Plata, we immediately gain 8 hours to cover the remaining distance. Thus, we can travel at a slower speed, and thereby do so using less fuel. At 9am Atlantic time on 18-Feb, there are 46 hours before our arrival in Miami at 6am Eastern time and thus our average cruising speed would be about 15.2 Knots (nautical miles per hour). If we had left Puerto Plata at the originally scheduled time of 5pm, there would be 38 hours before our Miami arrival and we would have to average 18.4 Knots to make our 6am docking. This translates into fuel burned. A ship obeys a cube law relationship of horsepower versus speed – halve the maximum speed and the horsepower is cut to 1/8th of the maximum speed horsepower. Assuming Riviera uses 100% horsepower at 20 Knots (the maximum speed I have seen on this cruise), then we can fill out the table below: Speed % Full Horsepower Hours Sailing to Miami Full HP Hours 15.2 kts 44.2% 46 20.3 Full HP-hours 18.4 kts 77.9% 38 29.6 Full HP-hours So, by skipping Puerto Plata, Riviera will use about 2/3rds the horsepower-hours had we stopped and thus burned about 1/3rd less fuel. I am not saying that is why Oceania bypassed Puerto Plata, DR today – I do not doubt the difficulties in maneuvering a 15-deck high ship in a narrow channel with a bad crosswind – I am just saying that doing so gave the company a bonus in the economic bottom line. Just an interesting observation.

They also appear to have run out of Splenda sweetener. They have Truvia but not a packet of Splenda to be found in Terraces at lunch today.

Wow! I need to go where you're going. So far, my pours onboard have not been that generous. (Horizons or Martini bar).

We originally had Red Ginger booked for tonight, but once we realized DH's Chiefs were in the Super Bowl, we changed our reservations to last night, instead. Surprisingly, we got a single table rather than shared even after changing it so recently.

We did not get a tote. We spoke to long time Oceania cruises last night (Concierge class) and they also did not get a tote bag.

My exact meal last night, as well. It was very good. I'm taking photos, too, for my executive chef son.

Yes, we have both their 30 day "Cruise Plan" of which Riviera is a ship that is supposed to have this service as well as their International Plan. I confirmed that it is showing on my AT&T account. It is simply not working on my phone and only text on DH's. I can see "cellular at SEA" in my location bar which is supposed to be correct. We have turned off our Cellular Data to avoid data usage charges but their instructions on using their Cruise Plan state specifically not to use Airplane Mode. It would definitely not connect in that status. We'll see how it goes and I'll address this with AT&T when we return. Thanks!

@loriva we did not do the B2B (unfortunately). We are in the middle or repairs to our Hurricane Ian damaged home and didn't feel like we should be gone for 20 days (10 days was about what we thought would be OK). Also, DH has jury duty scheduled for right after our return and we didn't think they'd take kindly to using "going on an extended cruise" as a good excuse. 🙂 We will be going to one trivia session this afternoon. The evening one is during our Red Ginger reservations, so we'll miss that one. We will report back in on how trivia was later.

Cruise director is Steve Campbell. We find him a bit hard to understand over the intercom, but fine when he's on stage in front of us (for instance, this morning at the Enrichment Speaker talk). In other notes, Internet for us has been spotty. Different types of problems, so we never know if it's our devices (or walking over one another, even though the first is definitely logged off), or what. Also, our phone reception which we paid AT&T for their "cruise package" has been horrible. We are supposed to be able to both text and phone, and we put it on both our lines. We can sometimes text one another. My phone will not text anyone other than DH. He can text friends & family...... sometimes. I cannot. We cannot call at all. So, I'm not really sure what we paid AT&T for. Frustrating because we told family and house sitters that they were going to be able to reach us. Lesson: don't trust AT&T. Otherwise, the cruise has been great so far. Seas are somewhat high and quite windy out there, and they closed the paddleball and golf areas due to the winds.

We are on board as well. We noticed another hour taken off our first port (St. Kitts). It had originally been 9:00 a.m. when we booked, changed to 10:00 a.m. a few weeks ago, and now showing 11:00 a.m. on our TV interface. We have one of the longer shore excursions booked (through Oceania), so it will probably take up our entire time in port and we won't have much time to look around on our own.

On both www.cruisemapper.com and www.cruisetimetables.com, it shows only Oceania Riviera in port on 2/17/23, so hopefully that means we will be docking at Old Town? It seemed surprising to me that there would only be one ship in port on any given day, but we can hope?

MEFlowa - I read your trip review and couldn't tell if you did all your ports on your own or any on an organized excursion? We have booked one excursion to go to Nevis from St. Kitts, but nothing else yet. Any recommendations? Thanks!

Glad to hear you had such a great trip and looking forward to your review. Would love to hear about what you did for shore excursions and how you would rate your choices for those. We will be embarking in just under 4 weeks.