Prologue - Day -1

It’s been almost two years since we disembarked our last cruise on January 5, 2020.  Since then we’ve been embroiled in the Covid-19 crisis, had two cruises cancelled, remodeled our master bedroom, enjoyed staying at home, was a principal worker on a major remodel of our church’s parsonage (it’s now complete and our new pastor and his family are enjoying it immensely), enjoyed camping in our 2020 PrimeTime travel trailer, enjoyed watching the seasons change at our home, helped our daughter and her family move into a really nice new home, spent time with most of our other children, and much more.  But it’s now time to restart cruising.

 

We’re itinerary driven cruisers.  When the itinerary popped up for a Seattle to Fort Lauderdale cruise early in the summer, we were immediately interested as it presented the opportunity to sail from our home city through the Panama Canal northbound (we done southbound transits three times) and end in a Florida port that we’re really familiar with and have a now good friend that we met while cruising who lives there.  It’s then an easy non-stop flight home later that day after disembarkation.

 

In planning to take the cruise, the big elephant in the room has recently been the effects of Covid-19 in our home port area, on board the ship, and at the ports along the way.  We chose to get vaccinated as soon as they were available and both of us got the Pfizer vaccine shots.  We practiced social distancing and tried to follow all of the protocols.  Earlier this week we also got the Pfizer booster shot and a flu shot.  For me, the only side effect was a sore arm for all three of the shots.  My wife fared much better.  It seemed as the months went by during the Covid crisis and the cruising shutdown that there was an ever changing target for the cruise lines to hit in order to resume cruising.  When Holland America finally announced the resumption of cruising out of Seattle for Alaska as well as in Europe our hopes were buoyed that a destination cruise would open up for us and it sure did!  We secured a very nice fare with 3 free specialty restaurant dinners each, $100 each discount on 3 shore excursions, free WIFI, and 15 free specialty drinks per day (we’re not big drinkers, but we do like our Coke Zeros as well as hot chocolate, so this works for us.  Plus we can no longer bring plastic bottles on the ship and the amount of sodas that can be brought onboard are severely restricted).  Additionally we had some cruise credits available from a cancelled cruise and we applied them to this voyage.  So our net out of pocket cost for us was quite modest for this 21 day cruise.

 

As the months progressed I kept hearing and reading rumors about changes in ports.  On the Cruise Critic message board, the cruise even got tagged as “The Mystery Cruise” because of all of the changes.  In the end, we’re very satisfied with the itinerary as it gives us two new ports to visit (Avalon, CA and Manzanillo, Mexico.  We also get to do the north bound transit of the Panama Canal, we get to visit cruising friends who live on Aruba, and we have an overnight stay at Half Moon Cay which is Holland America’s private island in the Bahamas.  That’s going to be a first!

 

One major change in the preparations for the cruise involves the response to Covid-19.  This major change initially required us to get either a PCR or Antigen test 72 hours (approximately 3 days) in advance of embarkation.  I found it to be difficult to find places that would do this testing for a cruise, but I found a test that we could do at home in a proctored environment (think a private Zoom session).  So I bought 6 Antigen test kits from www.emed.com in early September, 2021.  Then the rules changed and the testing window was shortened to two (2) days before embarkation.   This meant that for our Saturday departure, we could do our proctored test no later than the Thursday prior to our embarkation.  These kits fit the bill perfectly. We’ll bring the unused tests as backups in case we need to test during or after the cruise.

 

On Thursday morning I set up my iPhone on a stand with an unopened test kit in front of me and logged into the test site and I gave the site permission to access and control my phone’s camera.  After a very short wait a person joined the call, scanned the unopened box’s bar code and instructed me to open the box on camera.  I did so and she instructed me to remove the testing card, she scanned the bar code on the test card which I then put flat on the table in full camera view, filled the test area with 6 drops of testing fluid, removed the nasal swab and swabbed each nostril with 5 rotations and inserted the swab into the testing card.  I then removed a protective adhesive strip and closed the card.  She set a timer for 15 minutes which allowed the test strip to be processed.  I could see the desired single pink line develop and at the end of the 15 minutes another proctor came on and scanned the results giving me the desired negative test result which I also confirmed.  Within moments the results were posted to my Navica account (testing APP) and an email was received confirming the negative results.  We then repeated the process for my wife and her results were sent to me as I set her up as a dependent in my account.  It was a very pleasant experience.

 

There are a few other changes in the preparation for boarding process that have been brought on by the pandemic.  First, virtually all of the check in process is done online including taking your own self photo for security and uploading it, completion of a health checklist which was formally done in the terminal.  I’ve also received several reminder emails to be sure to bring your passport, proof of vaccination completed at least 14 days prior to sailing, proof of a negative covid test, & a boarding pass.  They also urge you to download the Holland America Navigator APP to one’s smartphone or tablet which I’ve done.

 

We’re now packed, I’ve prepped the house for our being gone, notified our insurance agent to reduce our automobile coverage to just protecting the vehicles while they are parked, stopped the mail and newspaper, and worked down my 50 something pre-cruise checklist.  We’re ready to embark.  My next posting will be after we are on board and my intent is to have a daily posting although depending upon internet connectivity, it may not post daily. This blog won’t have many pictures; most of my pictures will show up on Facebook or on in a thread on Cruise Critic in the Holland America section in a posting titled, “Btimmer’s Almost Live from the Nieuw Amsterdam .  . . “. If you’re not a friend, find me there.  If you have a comment, please post it and I’ll try to answer it.

 

Until Saturday, keep safe, and think about what good you can do for someone else.