Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Emerald Princess, December 2008, Day 10

Port Everglades -- Disembarkation, drive north to Gainesville

Yesterday afternoon we got our departure tags for our luggage -- RED 6. This means we get off the ship shortly after 7:45 A.M.

At about 7:00 we rolled our rolling luggage out of D505 and headed for Club Fusion, our VIP departure lounge, to have some coffee and Danish and wait. Club Fusion is Emerald Princess' hottest disco and, according the Princess Patter daily newspaper, it's "the most innovative room on the high seas." Strangely the decor is American Old West.

When our tag color was called we were off the ship in a jiffy and would have been through customs in a flash, except...

One of our bags was missing. And there was a sea of about 8,000 other bags. The closest tag color to look through was orange so I went to where the orange tagged bages were. They hadn't called those folks yet and honestly there was at least an acre of orange tagged luggage, all in neat rows. Lucky for us, (1) our luggage also has distinctive tags of yellow with orange spots and (2) a customs lady saw it in with the orange section.

We, and a helpful porter, got to the street with all our bags, found a cab and got to our car at the Hampton Inn. We were on our way north by 8:40.

We drove exactly half way, 321 miles, and spent the night at the Holiday Inn Express in Gainesville. Dinner was at the Cracker Barrel next door.

Distances Sailed
Fort Lauderdale to Aruba
1137 nautical miles = 1308 statute miles = 2103 kilometers

Aruba to Bonaire
120 nautical miles = 138 statute miles = 222 kilometers

Bonaire to Grenada
395 nautical miles = 454 statute miles = 731 kilometers

Grenada to Dominica
199 nautical miles = 229 statute miles = 368 kilometers

Dominica to St. Thomas
274 nautical miles = 315 statute miles = 507 kilometers

St. Thomas to Princess Cays
740 nautical miles = 851 statute miles = 1369 kilometers

Princess Cays to Port Everglades
284 nautical miles = 327 statute miles = 525 kilometers

Total distance sailed
3149 nautical miles = 3621 statute miles = 5826 kilometers


NOTE: 1 nautical mile = 1.15 land miles = 1.85 kilometers

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