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.

family cruise adventure Day one at Sea

We spent the first day at sea heading to the Grand Turk Island. The weather was good and we all found our sea legs soon enough. The boys did not suffer from sea sickness at all during the whole trip. They actually liked the continuous gentle rocking of the ship. The Maasdam was quite small compared to other cruise ships so it rolled and pitched a bit more than on previous cruises the other members of my team told us.

Here is a picture of the boys ringing the ships bell.

More hanging out around the ship, we did not see anything exotic in the ocean the whole cruise though some of our team claimed to have seen a whale in the water right near the ship. (but that just might have been a good at sea conversation starter ;-D )

The kids liked the way they craved the ships name in the bench (and it seems on every other surface of the ship from the cutlery in the dinning room to your cabin bathrobe) So we took a picture here too.

Here we are hanging out by the pools, they enjoyed the time around the pools a lot one reason was the motion of the ship kept the surface of the pools continually rolling back and forth making small waves.

Here is a better view of the pool at the back of the ship where we spent quite a bit of time. It looks nice and empty now but when the sun was up you could hardly find a free pool chair. We had some amazing sunsets and sunrises on the open sea.

Can't wait tomorrow we land at Grand Turk Island.

Welcome to our family cruise adventure.

The first day of the cruise. We, as in the boys and myself went on a 7 day Caribbean cruise from Fort Lauderdale. Which was like 1600 miles away from San Antonio. So really the first part of the adventure was getting there. Two fun fill days in the van. We travelled through Houston to Beaumont to Pensacola to Tallahassee to Jacksonville then down along the Florida coast to Fort Lauderdale. I had never been out east so it was alot to take in. Over all the boys found the trip quite interesting. We got into Ft Lauderdale around midday on the 2nd of Jan and boarded the ship named the Maasdam in the early afternoon. And got checked into our cabins. Which were nice and comfortable, but a little small like you would expect most cabins to be.

Here is the map of the Islands we went to. First stop was Grand Turk, then San Juan, Puerto Rico, then St Thomas and then to Half moon Cay (pronounced Key) and then home to Ft Lauderdale.

We will feature each of those islands on a separate update so stay tuned.

Here are the boys on the main deck under one of the life boats. There was a lot of detail

and the boys were interested in everything.

Here we are at the front of the ship with one of the ships aux anchors.


One of the other Cruise ships in the harbor from the Holland America line. Our ship sort of looked like this only smaller.

We had a escape drill on the first day and had to stand under our assigned life boat with the rest of the passangers. The best part that the boys enjoied the most was wearing the life jackets.

The boys happy to be alive and on the beginning of our fun carribean adventure.

Kids performing at Christmas

The kids were able to do a number of shows this Christmas which was very special and fun for them. The boys took part in a little play that they did of the Cobblers Guest story and Ashley and Jade sang some carols. They performed in two Assisted Care Facilities and also for all of our friends that help us.

Ashley and Jade singing, "Away in a manger"

Kenny as a poor blind man and Alan as a street sweeper in the Cobblers Guest play