Last stop Half moon Kay.

The ship could not get near the dock so it dropped anchor half a mile out. Here is a pic of the side right as we were stepping on to the ferry to go across.

Here we are making our way just Alan and me, Kenny stayed on board and rested. It had been raining that morning so it was a little overcast. But thankfully it stayed dry the rest of the day.

The docking area for the ferries was this very narrow little channel, I guess the island is very exposed so they built this little harbor to protect from the serious storms you can get out here. By the way the island belongs to the Holland America shipping line so everything here is geared to the ships passengers.

Here is a view of the beach, with its beautifully whites sands and clear water.

They had all these kids slides etc on the island which Alan really enjoyed.

This little hut marked the spot for viewing stingrays so we hung out there a while till we saw some.

The stingrays were harmless and you could go down and touch them for a small fee.

Alan having a small snack before heading back, they had free food on the island, courtesy of the cruise line.

Here we are heading back to the ship at the end of a day of fun and exploring on the island.

Our last sunset of the cruise, and that concludes are cruise blog updates. Adios till next time

Stay tuned for new updates from Leila's trip to England.

5th day Spent at Sea enroute to Halfmoon Cay

We spent this day at sea leisure’s hanging around the ship. Here is an old cannon in the casino that the boys though was pretty cool.

Here is Alan engaged in his favorite on board activity, they had a free ice cream bar, so we must confess, we had quite a bit of ice cream on the cruise. But we made up for it at the meals with plenty of fresh vegetables and meat etc.

Here is a picture of the other pool on the ship its got a roll back roof and today it was rolled back to let the sun in, so we got a good picture of it. They also had a couple of fun show and tell events featuring the history of pirates in the Caribbean. And also one about rum running that was big in the area in the early 19th century (they mentioned Horace Alderman in the presentation.)

Here we are minus Kenny (he wasn't feeling so good) all dressed up to eat in the 5 star Rotterdam restaurant. Unfortunately Alan did not enjoy the experience one bit, but besides that it was enjoyable. But I must admit fine dinning is not for young kids. Though they should get the practice.

Here we are with Susan and Grace who are also missionaries with us in San Antionio. We soon pulled the curtains back and enjoied a great sunset as we ate some of the best Itialian i have had yet.



Next stop Half moon Cay, then home to Leila and the girls. Boy, how i missed them.

St Thomas day 4 of the cruise

We arrived safely at St Thomas around six in the morning. At around 8:00 we heard announcements that there was a electrical fire abroad the ship. So the boys and I promptly decided to get off the ship and wait it out.

So here is a pic of us exploring things at the dock while we wait for the all clear, before we can go back on board and eat breakfast etc.

Eventually we got the all clear and went back to our cabin where Kenny began to throw up and he end up staying in bed for the rest of the day. In all we started our day off in St Thomas with plenty of excitement.

Alan and myself eventually went ashore and the first thing we noticed was these large iguana’s sunning themselves on the rocks near the docks. There must have been a dozen of them. Anyway we took a pic of just this one.

We walked down to a very posh little marina and they had all these really nice expensive sail boats, so we walked around talking to the different people about their boats and we took lots of pictures. So most of this update will be pictures of really nice expensive boats.

This boat was really unique it had belonged to General Patton and was over 70 years old its called the "when and if". It was being wintered here, down from Martha's vineyard. It is double planked with oak on the inside and African mahogany on the outside. It took a crew of six to sail her as everything was manual unlike the newer sail boats where the sails are all motorized and computer controlled.

When walked back to the ship the crew were having a full evacuation drill. So they lowered all the life boats one a time and tested them. It was not every day you see a ship drop its life boats so we stayed to watch.

Here is another posh sail boat belonging to the rich and famous, the security at the marina would not even let us come close to it. But I got a good picture of it from the deck of the Maasdam.

Here we are pulling out of St Thomas its about 4 in the afternoon (apparently some of the ships passengers got left on the island as the ship will only wait about 20 minutes past departure time for any late comers.)

Here is another pic of the "When and If" it really is quite the classic boat isn't it?

Another nice sailing boat

Another picture of the island and all the moored sailing boats taken in the afternoon as we were leaving.

There were all these small barren rocky islands around St Thomas which looked neat in the setting sun.

One of those beautiful sunsets at sea that we enjoied almost every day.

Here we are in San Juan Puerto Rico

Here is the view from the ship as we pulled into the harbor of San Juan. You can see the Spanish fort walls along the beach. We spent most of the day at the fort.


Here we are nicely docked. The boys were more than eager to explore the town.

There were many nice walkways along the water with large trees. We of course are making a bee-line to the fort.

The walls were over 50 feet high in most places. The Spanish got here first thanks to Columbus so they built forts everywhere to protect the silver and gold they were "exporting". Apparently they grabbed 250,000 tons of gold in the first couple of years setting up shop in this part of the world. Which was something like one 3rd of the worlds supply at that time. So they could afford to build these massive forts.

Here is one of the sentinel look out posts. They basically just hang on to the top corner of the wall. I thought it was pretty neat to make something like that completely out of stone.

We walked for about a mile and a half along the bottom of the wall it was quite hot and we thought at the end of the path along the bottom of the wall there would be a way to get to the fort at the top...... Unfortunately there wasn't and we had to walk all the way back to go through the main gate to get to the fortifications along the top of the wall.

Here is a pic of the main gate. This was the official entrance into the fort/city. it was quite ingeniously layed out and not many people were able to sneak by in there sailing ships without getting blown to bits by the cannon fire.

Here we are going down to the battlements at the top of the wall. As you can see it commanded a complete view of the horizon.

Here is a picture of the boys at one of the sentential outposts. Apparently the average height of the Spanish soldier back then was like 5 ft. So it was a bit small even for the kids to check out.

Here are the boys at the main lookout area. You can basically see in every direction for miles and miles. You can also see the little island across the bay the Spanish had a much smaller fort set up there. And between the two forts they could effectively cut off any entrance to the bay with there cannon cross fire.

Here is a picture of the lower fortifications. apparently they used to heat cannon balls till they were red hot and shoot them across the water at any ships (the heated cannon balls would bounce on the surface of the water increasing the chance of hitting the enemies ship hauls.)

Checking out the cannons

While we were there at the fort this cruise ship went by. So i took a pic, thankfully it was not our ship.

The boys in a store house of the fort.

Here is a view of the path at the base of the wall that we took in the morning.

Here is a cruise ship that was moored next to us. it had 5 masts and motorized sails. It looked real interesting.

Here is another picture of the same ship you can see the masts better in this picture.

We set out at about 10;00 that evening to our next port of call. St Thomas. More pictures coming about that. Stay tuned.

Welcome to Grand Turk

We docked early in the morning and we were off the ship by 9:00 ready to explore the island. We took a couple of pictures of the kids by the ship. Next to the small dock the ship looked massive.

Another picture of us by the ship

Here is a better picture showing the size of the ship, check out the clear water. Grand Turk is supposed to have been the best island on our cruise for snorkeling.

Here are couple more pictures of the island itself so you can get a better idea of what it looked like and how crystal clear the water is.

Here is the beach area where we spent most of the day.

Here is a picture of Kenny snorkeling, one of your team members had a underwater camera so we took a bunch of neat underwater pics.

Another shot with the underwater camera

Yours truely enjoying the limelight

There were all kinds of fish and we had great fun swimming with them and taking underwater pictures.

We also rented a clear bottom Kayak and paddled around. Alan really enjoyed this as that was the only time he saw the sea floor very clearly.

We ended our time on the island in a nice restaurant area. Here is a picture of the boys with our ship in the background from the upstairs of the restaurant.

The boys outside the restaurant.

We had great fun on Grand Turk, and when the cruise was over the boys rated this island as the best of all the ones we visited.