Woke up a little fuzzy from the night before. Heather and I took a stroll along the "Boardwalk". No boards involved here. Found an awesome little beach side restaurant called the Pasanggrahan for breakfast. Heather had the French Toast and I the Denver Omelette. Typically I don't feel the need to list everything I eat on vacation .... Mainly because all I'd be doing is writing about what I eat. But this breakfast was outstanding, and the coffee here? Outstanding!

Maybe it's because we are where we are. Maybe a pigeon could poop on me right now and I'd describe in great detail how awesome being **** on in the Caribbean is.

..... Speaking of pigeons .... There he is ..... Just kidding about the pooping little feller .... Shoo ...

Watching the big cruisers roll in. Our tiny ship in in there somewhere. I can see several large masts poking up between the big boys ......

Today, we sail.

After we check out if the wonderful Holland House, we had several hours to kill so we walked down the Main Street of Phillipsburg. Jewelry and Electronics stores dwarfed all the others 3-1 .... Maybe more. After we tired of the high pressures local sales drive and after we had secured our Cuban cigars and my bad ass bamboo shirt ... We decided to hit a little beach jaunt called Cpt. Jacks for lunch.

To make a literal long story short, 90 minutes and $160 later we're fast walking to the shuttle for the ship ..... Hehe .... We did the shuttle shuffle.

Which is where I am currently typing this update ..

Embarkation went mostly as expected. Mostly. The folder with our ship docs was in a bag that had already been put on the ship. A very nice local kid took me down to the boat where they had to give me permission to come aboard to get the necessary paperwork. So .... That is how I was officially the very first cruiser to see the inside of the ship. I confirmed this with the cruise director. We gave the kid $10 as a token of our appreciation for making that experience as hassle free as it was. I got the impression from his reaction that 1. That doesn't happen a lot and 2. $10 is a lot for him. Perspective.

Got back to the check in point and stood in line for what seemed like forever. Typical check in stuff. Give us your credit card so you can't balk when you see the bar bill at the end of the trip.

Standing in line allowed for us to meet numerous people who would quickly go from the meet list to the friends list.

Got on board, and the party was well under way. Chatted it up with a couple of the guys from the band .... and pretty much just hung out with everyone. The cool thing about this cruise is that everyone on this ship has a commonality. To step back and look at it as a bystander one would think this was a reunion, which in a sense I guess it kindasorta is. Except for the people you come with though, you don't know anyone until you meet them. Making friends fast. Great people. Going into this I sort of thought I'd one and done it but I dunno. The first impression is pretty impressive.

I took a few moments to stroll along the decks of this magnificent sailing vessel before it got dark. What an impressive ship! The Star Clipper is a four mast Barquentine (or schooner barque). A Barquentine is a sailing ship with 3 or more masts. She is a 16 sail, 366 ft work of art which holds 170 people.

I've heard whispering of a Llama Pirate names Llarry who would be appearing from time to time during this specific trip .... I dunno though ... whisperings are like the wind. They're only useful if there's a sail to catch them ....

Dinner time is when it was really apparent the connections were real. The dining room was packed with people laughing and joking and talking. Truly something you don't see on a big cruise ship. Not sure if I'll ever be able to do a big cruise after this. There's just something .... different about this.

Talking to several people, I do have to note about half the people in the cruise have done this before so, yes, in a sense, it is sort of reunion ... ish. A reunion where new people are welcomed with open arms.

At 6:45 they had the emergency evacuation drill ..... Here's a great idea. Let's get 150 Big Head Todd & the Monsters fans together, open the bar at 4, and have a lifeboat drill almost 3 hours later. It was amusing to say the least but at go time, everyone did what they needed to do and was where they needed to be.

At 10 pm .... They had a champagne sail raising on the top deck. I don't even know how to describe how cool that was. Sailing away from St. Maarten with just the wind as your power.

Freaking A+++ .....

..... And the rest of the night was just a huge party. Ended hanging until about 2am ....

Sleep came quickly. Can I call passing out "sleep?"