*For Christmas 2023 we gave our girls the gift of The Cruise. At the time we hoped it would provide a luxurious respite from our year on the road. As the end of January, 2024 neared, our exhaustion inreased due to the rough weather along the Gulf. The camper had sprung leaks, our towels were never dry, a huge storm near Mobile was almost disastrous. Then, a polar vortex descended as we drove through Houston. Finally, in San Antonio, we left the camper and drove to Galveston for our long hoped for respite from the travails of camper life and rough weather.
**Sadly, my phone died on the cruise…for good. I didn’t end up with one single photo.
January 22, 2024 – Bulverde, Texas, 6:00 a.m.
It rained and stormed ferociously overnight. I awoke in the morning to heavy, swollen skies, intermittent rain, and flash flood warnings on my phone. It was 42°. We pulled out into the gloom. North of Bulverde we drove through deep puddles covering the road, past signs saying “Watch For Water On Road.”
Kay [my sister-in-law], much later, after the conditions on our cruise became known to all, would say, “Nick and Mother Nature are in a dark alley, and she’s giving him a beating!”
We drove through heavy rain, almost impenetrable at times, on I-10, right back the way we had come only a few short days ago. We saw three cars off the road, two of them flipped. I knew later I would experience that apathetic, inert state that came after long periods of intense focus.
Our spirits lifted when the Voyager hove into view at the cruise terminal. The girls squealed with excitement. The huge entrance hall had a giant version of the Royal Caribbean crown and anchor emblem hanging from the ceiling. After passing through security we exited the building and walked alongside the berthed ship for a few moments before the girls even realized it was the Voyager. They craned their necks to take it in.
“This thing is huge!” they all said at once. Only Sienna had been on a cruise before, and she had only been twelve months old then.
We crossed the gangway to the Captain’s welcome and entered the vast interior. We spent the afternoon exploring the cavernous ship.
After dinner we explored some more, looking fine in our hastily acquired dress clothes from Macy’s that we purchased for a funeral for a family friend who passed suddenly in December. Dress clothes had not made the cut for our year on the road. It felt nice to walk among a well-dressed crowd, having eaten a fancy, white-tablecloth meal in an enormous dining room with attentive servers. The camper felt a million miles away. Sienna wanted to find the teen club and I needed to rest. They went off exploring and I headed back to our stateroom.
Journal Entry: January 24, 2024 Off the Coast of Galveston
“Ship is rocking and rolling. Can feel waves hitting the hull and reverberating. Our stateroom is at the front of the ship, two round portholes look out onto the bow. Girls are exploring. I’m feeling that vacant stare that comes on after long days. Today another doozy. Never would have guessed you could cram so much into one day. We do it over and over. Our waiter, Roland, at dinner warned us of rough seas overnight. Mother Nature is taking more potshots.”
Journal Entry: January 25, 2024 Gulf of Mexico
“Big waves this morning from the wee hours on. Couldn’t sleep. Can feel every wave and hear the booms as they pound against the hull. Just crossed into deeper water. Grabbed a coffee in the Promenade. Went out on deck. Wind was hammering, flattening my shirt against my chest, threatening to blow the coffee right out of my cup. Watched the massive sprays of water off the hull as the ship cut through the waves. Mesmerizing. Humid warmth felt nice. First time I’ve been truly warm in weeks.”
Up on the pool deck water was sloshing everywhere. At the height of each swell water sprayed out, dousing the kids perched on the edge of the pool (closed off with ropes) waiting for it. It flowed in heavy streams across the deck down into the drains.
We had a huge breakfast in the Windjammer that morning. “Washy washy before yummy yummy!” shouted the Asian hostess welcoming everyone in.
Ava went straight for the Indian fare, Teagan for the donuts, and Sienna for a hodgepodge of everything. I took whatever had the shortest line. The crowds and constriction of being on a ship were beginning to seep into my psyche. You are stuck on this ship, it said. You have no control over your direction or fate and are surrounded by an angry ocean battling against ineluctable winds whipping the waves into a green streaked froth. Good luck with all that.
That night Wendy and I took Teagan to the Kid’s Club and let Sienna and Ava roam while we went to the theater. Finally, a date. The opportunities to spend time alone were rare during our trip. A friend in Rockford had said, as we walked into a restaurant one July afternoon, “Do you bring them everywhere you go, or what?” As a family of five living on the road in an RV we did everything and went everywhere together. We shared one bathroom and ate meals at a tiny dinette designed for four, often eating with someone’s elbow in our plate or a leg squashed against another.
January 24, 2024
The next morning our stop in Costa Maya was canceled due to rough conditions in the port. Apparently, two other ships were unable to dock. They closed the port after that. The Mayan ruins near Costa Maya were the main reason I was excited for the cruise…maybe the only reason.
Mother Nature scored another W.
We disembarked in Cozumel, marveling at the clear, viridescent waters off the dock. The weather was perfect, for once. The girls had signed up for a dolphin swim. We walked through town to get there. Sienna waved at strangers on the side of the road.
“You should probably stop doing that,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because you are attracting attention to yourself from strange men in a strange city who may not have your best interests at heart, that’s why.”
The employees at the dolphin facility proceeded to whisk us through the welcome orientation, the rules, the bar for our one free drink, the dolphin swim, then snorkeling, showers, lunch, an offer to buy overpriced photos, the gift shop, tips and farewell all faster than I could say hasta luego. The next group was already lined up as we left.
Back on the boat the girls finally had a good pool day. They went back and forth between the hot tubs, the water slides, and the Flowrider. Wendy enjoyed drinks on her Seapass in the hot tub. I finally relaxed enough to sit in the sun and read a book. Maybe this cruising business wasn’t all bad?
As we approached our stateroom that night we heard the ding-dong over the PA of an incoming message.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking, good evening.” He said, and then continued rattling off unintelligible information. Then he finished: “We just want to inform you that our crossing back over the Gulf to Galveston will be significantly rougher than it was…”
I did not hear anything else after that.
January 25, 2024
Gray, leaden skies and rain streaked windows greeted us in the morning. We had an early lunch in the Windjammer and picked a table next to the cantilevered floor to ceiling windows. Mistake. The waves were huge. The ocean was laced with foam and whitecaps. The whole grim tableau looked like marbled jade. A subdued atmosphere overtook the restaurant. That gluttonous, hedonistic (sadistic?) appetite that overcomes one at a cruise ship buffet did not appear that afternoon. The waves being too much to look at we fled back to our room. That was worse. As the bow of the ship plunged through the swells, ferocious winds flung water up onto our windows. It was all we could do to avert our eyes from the terrific scene.
“Good Lord,” muttered Wendy, turning away from the windows.
When the drawers and doors of our various cabinets started opening and closing due to the violent motion of the ship we decided to leave. A triple-alpha came over the PA: a request for medical assistance being called to a room. Going down the two flights of stairs to the Promenade was a struggle. People were not doing well. Some were crouched in corners weeping, others were clearly unsure where to go, others were carrying life jackets around. I cursed those people, you’re scaring the children, you bastards! Then I thought, maybe they were the smart ones.
We found seats in front of the Pig & Whistle on the Promenade and decided to stay put for the time being. At that point the ship really started to lean. People caught walking stopped mid-stride trying to stay upright. Others looked to the lower wall or the higher wall, unsure which would be safer if the ship continued to list. We scootched our chairs under the table and gripped the edge to stay in place. The ship kept leaning.
Outside, a massive thunderstorm had finally hit. Later, we saw videos of chaise lounges being flung over the top rail and landing in the pool on the deck below in a snarled tangle of plastic and metal. Other videos showed giant waves periodically covering the small porthole windows of people’s staterooms.
Back in the Promenade, things went from bad to worse. Glass display cases began to topple, shattering into tiny shards (one of which we still have today) that sprayed across the floor under our table. Watches, T-shirts and jewelry slid off display tables and crashed to the floor. Clothing racks toppled like dominos. Plates and cups crashed off the shelves of the pizza place. Slot machines fell over in the casino. The noise was enough to set our nerves on fire. Teagan was visibly shaken. I put her in my lap and scooted my chair back under the table.
Wendy, though…Wendy was up and at ‘em! She was assisting the employee at the jewelry shop who, against all odds, and finally with Wendy’s help, managed to wrangle the other giant glass display case into the shop so it too would not shatter. Not an easy task when your world is tilted at five degrees, maybe more. A woman in my line of sight was shaking. She kept looking into her pint glass trying to maintain a calm demeanor. She was losing the battle. I was trying not to do the same. I was seeing Mobile again in my mind’s eye, watching the wind speeds scale up and expecting a tornado at any moment. Picturing the camper ripped off the ground (hopefully empty of inhabitants) and flung into the wind. I continued picturing terrible things happening when I noticed Sienna taking videos in helpless excitement. And I saw Wendy up and about, helping people and smiling. How did she do that? I was waiting for it to end, trying to be calm for the girls while she was out saving the day.
Meanwhile, the Windjammer restaurant flooded with pool water. Glassware slid and crashed off every flat surface. People in the restaurant got down on the floor. Staterooms with balconies also flooded. Videos later showed people ankle deep in their own rooms. Water was coming in from the decks. It poured in and sloshed down the stairways.
The list finally abated and another announcement came over the PA, this one from our Scottish Cruise Director. We could not understand a thing he said, although I could tell he was not our usual, chipper Cruise Director; this time he was our cautious, somewhat alarmed Cruise Director telling us more storms were possible throughout the evening.
The employees at the Pig & Whistle put on a game of trivia, ostensibly to help distract everyone from the madness. I put Teagan in charge as our runner. She relayed the questions to us well considering they were mumbled into the mic by a nervous, non-native English speaker. Teagan enjoyed the distraction.
Eventually, we headed back to our room, sloshing along saturated carpets and across a quiltwork of towels feebly absorbing water. Ava wiped up some water on our bathroom floor using a towel. Miraculously, none of us had gotten physically ill. (Take Wendy on a fishing charter with a five-foot swell and she will spend the entire time hanging over the leeward rail staring at her lunch bobbing away in the wake. Put her on a one hundred thirty thousand ton ship in a twenty-foot swell and she’ll be…swell.)
It was quiet at dinner that night. The darkness beyond the windows at my elbow scared me. The seas had calmed enough to allow dinner service to commence. The Chef’s Special didn’t call to me. We asked our waiters how the kitchen fared during the storm. The casualness of the response indicated that it was certainly a disaster. I was amazed they were able to serve food at all.
In the elevator, which I side-eyed, we spoke to a couple about the storm. The man said to us, “In twenty-three years of cruising I’ve never seen anything like that.”
I could not sleep that night; imagined us plowing into another storm. Our foolish Captain clearly was not afraid to do so. I tossed and turned and the ghastly view from the portholes earlier in the day loomed in my mind. I awoke frazzled and frayed. Yet, the boat was docked and stable. It was not moving. Terra firma was mere steps away.
Later, while devouring YouTube shorts of the Voyager of the Seas January 26 storm, we saw Wendy in one as she helped the shop owner pull the big display case back inside.
“Guys, look! It’s Mommy!”
Her courteous, and courageous, deed had gone viral.
Shine Like a Little Gem
Kids are adept at ignoring the bad and focusing on the good. I noticed when the girls told the cruise story they had an excitable energy about them, not the defeatist, grim scowl I had. They talked about the emerald green water they swam in near the restaurant in Cozumel, the water slides on the boat, the dolphins, and the food! The storm was just an exciting part of the whole, which to them was golden. For me, even now, the storm eclipsed everything else that happened. I can’t think of the cruise without feeling that creeping sense of doom that came over me during the height of the storm. Thank God for our kids and the alternate view they provided on many occasions. They helped us see the world in a new way.
Michael Collins, who orbited the moon (and discovered what it truly means to be alone in the process) while Neil and Buzz took all the glory on the lunar surface, said this about his first view of Earth from space: “It was tiny, very shiny, blue and white, bright, beautiful, serene and fragile.” He goes on to say that you couldn’t experience the “full flavor” of what he saw from the pictures because the processing techniques of the day were “pretty crude.”
Earth, therefore, in pictures “…doesn’t sparkle like the real thing…it doesn’t shine like a little gem as it would…if you could see it unfiltered.”
My kids allowed me to see things minus the filter of age.
As our trip continued after the wild cruise, I would most certainly have missed a lot of gems without them.
*Read more about our trip on the Wandering Woodlands blog
*Read more of my writing on the Write to Procrastinate blog
Such good writing…my stomach was clenched the whole time you shared this experience. Appreciating what the kid’s experienced and Wendy’s jump into action, was inspiring!