You guys took good care of the Mariner on Splash II and she looked good when we boarded yesterday. With the new rules forbidding non-Americans from doing any work off the ship the inefficient locally hired staff made a real cluster**** of the check in process. From noon until past 4:00 guests were made to wait nearly an hour before passing through security to check in at the terminal because of the back up at the check in area. Once we boarded however the smiles returned and things seemed ship normal. Mark Conroy was on board and we got to spend about an hour with him. There were about 10 cruise ships in port, including the 2 Royal Carib "monstrosities of the seas" and the Mariner was the runt (in size) of them all. The winds were brisk and later at night we had rough waters with 12 meter swells and wind gusts up to 100 knots that lasted until lunch time today which is a sea day. Needless to say, restaurants weren't very busy at breakfast or lunch. Six of us traveling together had pre-arranged a steak tartare lunch and the F&B manager decided to have the preperation done in P7 by the Exec Chef and then we were served in CR. Our group does this whenever we're cruising together and it has become popular with some of the officers so Capt Stan, staff capt, hotel mgr and GM all eagerly joined us. It was one of the best tartare any of have ever had. Time for trivia now.
Jim