Fort Lauderdale Pictures/ cruise week of Nov 12-19

Beach Ocean side a block from the Hall of Fame Marina. Facing the street from the same spot. You could get the number 40 bus and go to the Galleria Mall and get nearly anything you needed. If you transferred to the number 36 you could go to Home Depot, the Publixs grocery, Wells Fargo, Book store, Nappa for radiator parts, it is all here. The all day bus pass for $4 was great.

Charles thought it would be a good idea for us to rent a car to get things before we left town. So The Newest West Marine, Bed Bath and Beyond, JoAnn Fabrics, Kohl's were on the list.,

A few days after we arrived our friend Russ and Mary from EYC arrived at Bahia Mar marina which was next door and where I rented the car from Hertz. So we went to socialized a little after the cruise when they arrrived in town. Our thoughts were we both jumped off at the same time but they headed for Lucaya instead of the West End.

THE CRUISE on the CRUISE

This is the Holland America ship we took for the National Review Cruise. For those interested the statistics include : Decks 11, guests 2,104, crew 800, elevators 14, length 936 ft, width 105.8 ft, Draft 26 ft, Built 2008, props Azipods, Diesel 6 engines, Maz speed 23.9 knots, goss tonnage 86,000, bow thrusters :3 units, 3400 bhp with a cute bull nose in front. The National Review participants were about 550 people.

Our lectures were in the theater area mostly which is why we had 8 pm late seating for dinner so other guests could see the show. We were fortunate enough to be assigned seating with speakers for three evenings, and our dinner partners always changed by National Review assignment so we met lots of very interesting people.


The take home was one couple- Emily and Bill who are from Seattle. We may have Bill as a passenger on Ariel at some point. We were very blessed to also meet Betsy and Russ who live in St Cloud MN but also have a boat at Yankee Point Marina and I believe live at a second house in the RRYC area, so we have potential new members. Small world. Both couples joined us after the cruise to see Ariel. We will probably do another cruise like this again. It was fun.

The ports we saw ( which Charles did not even want to get disembark for- but we did) included: Grand Turk *, San Juan *, St Thomas *, and Half Moon Cay. ( we went to those with stars on Ariel in a sedate cruiser style location with a few less tourist and fanfare. We did not do any side trips as the talks were our focus.

View from deck 11 (Lido) arriving in Grand Turk.