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SD II 3-10 March


vandrefalk
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Head to STT on Friday! Anyone else joining? Be interesting to see how far some of the islands have come since we were there last fall. We are supposed to go to Chrishi Beach, but the splash should be at Jost. Also supposed to go to North Sound, Virgin Gorda, so will be able to see what is left of Bitter End and Saba Rock.

Will report as I can!

Vandrefalk

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Bon Voyage Vandrefalk. Looking forward to updates of the islands. A certain Brit is heading for SD as well. Good luck with his training if you are on the same ship. In Brunei today. Not bored yet. Hard to believe two months have flown (sailed) by.:cool:

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Bon Voyage Vanderfalk! Hope you have a fabulous cruise. We plan to enjoy the Charleston Food and Wine Festival this weekend, but otherwise it would be fun to join you. But it was just too soon after our Vietnam and Cambodia Uniworld River Cruise!

 

Keep us posted on your SD adventure!

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Lots to report! We stayed at Emerald Beach, which was perfectly acceptable. Some folks went to Lindbergh Bay and immediately left! EB was clean, pretty, room was great, restaurant and bar had great views. We’ve only stayed in St Thomas a couple of times and some 80% of the hotels are still closed. So EB was just fine and we’ll stay for one more night at the end of the cruise — normally go straight home, but differences in air fare made staying another night cost effective!

 

Got to Crown Bay an hour early, thinking shops would be open — nope! So we just hung out and talked to the iguanas who were enjoying the sun. Boarded right at 2 pm (first on board!) and were first to check in and first to get front bali bed! Was unpacked and back in the. lounge by 2:45 — a record. Ship looks good, but they still haven’t fixed the scrawled looking logo on port side. Didn’t see any of the issues we saw in Lisbon, although one guest said they had sealed the tile in the bathroom and it had a terrible odor. Our AC works fine and no other issues we’ve seen.

 

However, the schedule has changed considerably! There are 12-15’ swells coming into the BVI, so we missed Virgin Gorda. I understand it’s a mess anyway and Bitter End basically doesn’t exist. We did see a lot of damage in STT and a LOT of blue tarps. So we are at Charleston, Nevis today. Several excursions went off but we’ve stayed on board (been here several times — and it’s Sunday, so nothing open). Seas are deceptively rough even here. The tender is bouncing around a lot and banging into the ship — one woman fell on the platform and scraped her leg, but seemed to be ok and went ahead and got on the tender. They are doing water sports, however.

 

Tomorrow is the beach party at Chrishi Beach (we were there last fall). Jost apparently isn’t ready for a beach party but we will be there on Friday — to spend money at Soggy, I guess! Happy to do that :-)

 

Tuesday, we are in St Kitts — then to St Barths, Anguilla, and Jost and back to St Thomas. SD I is going from Barbados to St Thomas, so the Brits will jump ship and take II back to Barbados. We, on the other hand, will have to head back to reality.

 

Capt Steiner is the master — first officer MacLeod is onboard! We haven’t seen him in several years. Silvio is hotman; Jaime MD; Eric sommelier; Matt club director; Greg activities. Gareth, Tudor are two of the bartenders. Waiters Jerry, Jasper will be familiar to many. Sammy and Ray are music. Alistair is chef — last nights pepper crusted filet was one of the best I’ve had. Mussels for lunch today, of course. And Sudesh is on board! 90 guests on board, many of whom seem to be new. One of the very few times we haven’t known someone on board — WhatNot and CDreamer, Zimmy, et al — wish you were here! Will be interesting to see how the club members party goes.

 

So that’s it for now!

Vandrefalk

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Correction — Jamie is HM and Silvio is MD, not the other way around. Duh.

More changes! Last night we were all set up for the Captain’s welcome reception at the pool when some rather large swells came through as well as some rather large rain drops. Hot tub overflowed, even though they had lowered it earlier. Seems the large swells in the BVI are finding their way to us. We even had a waterspout on the horizon. Caviar stayed outside but everyone (including the Captain) moved into the lounge. Poor Sammy wasn’t sure where he was supposed to play, LOL! Still managed to have dinner topside.

Today, they sent a tender around to Chrishi, but too rough to manage the beach party. We had the splash on board, which was fine. Still getting lots of roll — we’ve been told that we’re on the way to St Kitts to see what conditions are there. Supposed to be there for prt of the day tomorrow — would like that as it’s one island we haven’t seen and we were going to take a tour. However, one thing you learn early on on SD is to be flexible! Safety first. So we may go to St Barts or who knows. Also have heard that Anguilla may be dicey, so we’ll just hang loose and see where we end up. Only sure thing is that we’ll be back in STT on Saturday. Crew is amazingly adaptable!

Casino is getting some action and the piano bar was busier as well — have not heard any great singers yet this trip, but did win a few dollars so I can afford the taxi back to the hotel!

All for now!

Vandrefalk

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Wow, Vandrefalk - having the splash at the pool in the Caribbean is a first, at least for us. I hope everyone onboard is dealing well with the movement.

 

It seems the Anguilla is always dicey - we've never made it there, although it was on a couple of our itineraries.

 

But flexible is the way to go. We spent one New Year's cruise tendered at one island, but at least we were safe!

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“Bitter End basically doesn’t exist.“

Oh wow, that’s sad - so many wonderful memories were made at that place!

 

Sounds like the sea has been a bit angry this time around, but you’re right - the advantage of SD is their ships can easily change course, if necessary. Just hope you get a bit more time at the remaining ports. Like Zimmy, I don’t remember the Splash in the Caribbean ever being held by the pool... only in Europe. Always fun tho’.

 

Am enjoying your reports, Vandrefalk, & look forward to reading more updates. Please hoist a Painkiller or two (!) for us and have fun!

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And the changes continue! Capt Steiner says it’s the worst he’s seen in 14 years. We did make it to St Kitts and did the tour and then on to St Barths. DH did the walk with Matt and reported back to me, so I didn’t go in. Shell Beach is good and the restaurant replacing Dos Brazil seems to be doing a good business.

We also made it to Anguilla, but anchored at Blowing Point rather than Sandy Ground. Zimmy, we’ve always been able to get in to Anguilla but never Anegada! Anyway, SD set up a tour where we went to Shoal Bay and had chairs and umbrellas. We’ve always taken a cab but I was just as happy to have SD take care of it. Water was very rough (though beautiful) so no one snorkeled and few went into the water. Announced last evening that BVI still closed so we came over to St Martin. They tried tendering from starboard this morning but it was just too rough. Oddly, the water doesn’t look that bad (no whitecaps, for example) and not much wind, but the swells are brutal! Tenders now leaving from deck 2 Portside but it still looks sporty to me! So no visit to Phillipsburg — there are two big ships in and folks who did go said it was a crowd. SD 1 is at St Barths and I understand

they’ve had lot of changes as well.

So back to STT in the morning — bags already partially packed :-(

Good news is we booked the spring 2019 crossing from Barbados to Lisbon and then the following week. Bad news is it is 13 months away! Oh, well.

Ship looks good — passenger mix was good — no complaints except for the swells! Now back to reality!

Vandrefalk

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Vandrefalk... Thanks for the updates. Sounds like you have had a good and interesting cruise. We are looking forward to the Eastbound Crossing out of Antigua and into Lisbon in about 4 weeks. We will see you on the Spring 2019, unless you decide to book the Westbound Crossing this fall. Thanks for the updates on the staff on board. I'd guess that we will have the same staff on our voyage in a few weeks.

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We were doing the Barbados to St Thomas cruise on SD1 at the same time. We spent 2 nights at the Marriott in Barbados prior to the cruise and enjoyed walking the historic area around the horse racing track, where they were getting ready for their biggest race of the year on 3/3. Embarkment was a little delayed, but we were also the first ones to check in onboard, and taken to our cabin by Aiza. Our trip to Bequia was uneventful, and our anchorage was calm. All of the shore excursions were cancelled so we did a hike with Taylor, the new cruise director, to Princess Margaret Beach. The walkway over and around the hill was just reopened, and we were offered rum punch when we got to the beach. A few of the hikers took a dip and decided to stay at the beach while the rest of us headed back to town. The next day, we tried to anchor at Mayreau. While the info given to us said that we would be anchoring in Salt Whistle Bay, we anchored in Saline Bay, which isn't considered a good anchorage in the winter. After a few table clearing swells, we were told that we were headed to Union Island (where a large cruise ship had just pulled out leaving a place for us to anchor) and we would have the Splash at the pool, and the BBQ food would be served for lunch at the restaurant. Right after lunch, it started to drizzle and then it rained hard for a few hours. They offered a tender to Union Island, but there's really nothing there that's worth being poured on. We made it to our stop at Le Marin in Martinique, which was well protected. Out stop in Guadeloupe was changed to Antigua where we anchored in very rolly water outside of Falmouth Harbour. They were able to set up a shore excursion which was a bus trip to St Johns (where we sat in traffic for an hour), and then on to Shirley Heights and Nelson's Dockyard. It was nice to get off the ship for the afternoon, and our tour guide was energetic and enthusiastic. There was also a 4 person helicopter excursion to Monserrat offered that day. These were the only shore excursions that occurred for the entire week. There were only 54 on board, and quite a few were on a bird watching tour, and didn't participate in anything else. Our last 2 days were in St Barts. Our activities director said that at midnight she was talking to a crew member on SD2, and they didn't know at that point where they would be going the next morning. We spent most of both days in St Barts on land since it was still pretty bouncy. Tendering was challenging most of the week. It was always from the Starboard side, which always seemed to be the rougher side of the ship. We looked longingly at the Star Pride on our second moring, which had an opening low on the side of the ship on the port side to get to the tender. A much better setup than SD's shaking railings down from deck 3 to a really rocking small tender. Last night to St Thomas was almost calm. We stayed at a B&B in Charlotte Amalie for 2 nights. The only other people there the first night were people we had met on the cruise. We rented a car for 2 days, and drove around St Thomas. Just as on St Barts, it's not easy to find an open restaurant outside of the main towns. Hotels on both islands are also limited since they have workers and displaced residents staying at many of the hotels that aren't damaged. We had a good time, but missed being able to snorkel or do any other water related activities because of the weather. We liked the ship (but I really missed having a balcony), the food was good (although the fish was sometimes overcooked), the Piano Bar after dinner was always a good time, and the crew provided excellent service. And I'm pretty sure I was able to pick out the Brit.

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Does this happen often, changing courses.p? We are considering a SD cruise next February. We’ve done Windstar a couple of times and never encountered this. But, when we were in St. John this year, we did notice a definite change in weather.

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Does this happen often, changing courses.p? We are considering a SD cruise next February. We’ve done Windstar a couple of times and never encountered this. But, when we were in St. John this year, we did notice a definite change in weather.

 

We have not experienced this in Europe, but with the rough weather the past few years in the Caribbean it is a little more commonplace. The primary issue is whether it is safe to get on and off the tender, since there are very few ports SD goes to where it can dock. Sometimes even docking can be problematic. In 2017 our disembarkation in St. Martin was changed from the French side to the Dutch side because of winds and high waves. Even our plane going home had to take off with less fuel, and make a fuel stop in San Juan, because of high winds. While there might be some disappointment, we would rather be safe. Besides, spending the day in total relaxation, being waited upon hand and foot, isn't the worst thing in the world. One rule we follow is that we don't book private excursions where we have to put down money in advance.

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We don't book private excursions in advance. We prefer to pay for the ship's excursions since we trust that we'll never be left behind at a port, and we hope that the cruise line knows the reputation of their excursion providers. Unfortunately, the only ship's excursions that weren't cancelled on our cruise was the one on the island that wasn't on our original itinerary. Much thanks to Anna, our activities director, for finding something at the last minute. We paid in advance for 2 shipboard excursions, and had trouble getting our 500 US dollars back from Sea Dream, even though both excursions were cancelled. If you have a chance to prebook a SD excursion, don't do it. Wait until you're onboard and book with the concierge on your embarkation day.

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Katbird93, this is the "worst" trip in terms of changing itineraries we've had in years. Usually, it's because of crowds or too many ships. I think this was unusual because of the weather effects from the huge storms in the northeast. In Italy, we had to change our Cinque Terre excursion because of seas -- but we went by land instead. Flexibility is the key!!

 

SWFLAOK, we heard II was having similar issues and sorry you had to miss the splash onshore as well! I have to say this was the smallest on board account bill we've ever had:D

And, yes, I'm sure you figured out the Brit.......

 

Jealous of those boarding today!

Vandrefalk

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