Just a Smidge: boats

Showing posts with label boats. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 5, 2023

An Open Letter to Carnival Cruise Lines

Dear Carnival Cruise Lines,

I have recently returned from my first cruise ship experience, which was on your gigantic new boat, the Celebration. I have some thoughts…

Since this was my first cruise, I had no previous experience with how people normally get on the ship to begin their cruise, and I still don’t, because we did not get on the ship normally. We didn’t even get on the ship safely.

As you are aware, an overnight boating accident with fatalities closed the entrance to the Port of Miami for a majority of the day that we were supposed to be getting on the boat. While the Celebration waited offshore, we waited on Miami Beach and at our hotel.

There was obviously nothing you could do about the 32-foot Scorpion high performance speed boat slamming into the 146-foot ferry at 3:30 in the morning. I mean, we get it. It’s Miami, and the cocaine doesn’t just move itself around. We understand that you have to have guys hauling ass in blacked-out boats at night all jacked up on Mezcal and Columbian blow. It’s just how it works, and sometimes they don’t see the enormous, well-lit, massive, literally bigger than a house, ferry boat. Whatcha gonna do?

You had no control over Captain Coke’s ability to navigate, or the Coast Guard’s ability to recover his boat and its precious cargo, but what you did have control over was your own ship and the instructions you gave to us, the people waiting to get on.

Now as you know, a long time ago we were all required to log on and choose our embarkation time slot. You use time slots to make sure the embarkation processes is smooth and controlled, and you use words like “embarkation” because boat language is weird. Right before they closed down the port entrance for a whole day, the cocaine mules probably yelled, “Oh, no, we are about to strike the starboard aft hull of that enormous, well-lit, house-sized transport vessel, with the forward quarter of our pleasure craft. The purser will keelhaul us for losing the cargo we stowed in the forward bulkheads!”

Anyway, you wisely gave us timeslots in which to board. Those timeslots obviously came and went with no ship to board, but once you were able to get into port late in the day, you needed to let us know how to proceed.

I’ll pause here. Since this is an open letter, I’ll let the readers that aren’t affiliated with Carnival give answers as to how this could be handled, knowing that all passengers have already been divided up into boarding groups.

But wait, I don’t want you, the reader, to come up with the answer. I want you to go outside and find a four-year-old and ask them for the answer.

We’ll wait.

OK, you’re back. What did the four-year-old come up with? Yes, that’s correct. A simple chart emailed to us that said, “If your original boarding time was X, your new boarding time is now Y.”

Now Carnival, I really want you to let that sink in (boat humor). Every four-year-old polled came up with the same simple, logical answer. The simple, logical solution that escaped you.

What did you do?

You said, “The ship is here. Be at the port between 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm to embark. Everyone must be on the ship by 11:00 pm.”

Keep in mind, the original boarding time slots were spread out over six hours. Also keep in mind the Celebration holds 6500 passengers. You read that correctly, in case you forgot. Six thousand, five hundred people.

Folks, don’t bother trying to find your four-year-old to get their opinion on this boarding plan. They will just tell you it’s the dumbest, most irresponsible, and possibly criminally actionable in a court of law plan that anyone could have come up with.

Carnival Cruise Lines, by definition, you know “cruise people.” (Readers, if you have been on a cruise, you know what I’m talking about. And if you’ve been on a cruise and don’t know what I mean by “cruise people,” then you are one. If you haven’t been on a cruise, think: Loud amusement park family of twelve, wearing all the amusement park clothing and souvenirs, dripping amusement park food and drinks all over themselves and passersby, and no one can find Bobby anywhere.)

Carnival, you have met millions of cruise people over the years. They are literally the only people you deal with. And that being the case, you actually made it sound like the ship would leave without them at 11:00 pm.

There is no possible scenario that exists in the cruise people universe where that doesn’t become a train wreck. There was no better way to make sure 6500 people all showed up at the same time than what you did. But you weren’t satisfied with handling it only that poorly. You had more bad decisions to make and you nailed every one of them.

You abandoned the time slot system, so it must have also made sense to you to abandon any form of crowd control in front of the cruise terminal building. In the stifling Miami heat and humidity, among the literally thousands of people bunched up in a wad in front of the building, I watched multiple fire trucks and emergency vehicles arrive to cart out older cruise people from the center of the mob who had been overcome by the collective heat.

I watched pizzas being delivered through the crowd to cruise people who had been at the terminal building all day, instead of waiting somewhere else in Miami, foolishly assuming they would be the first to board.

Lack of line ropes to form any type of entrance pathway or order? Check.

Lack of police or security guards or even uniformed Carnival personnel to provide direction and crowd control of any kind for 6500 people? Check.

Lack of signs or loudspeaker announcements to even tell people what to do, where to go, or even what was going on? Check.

Expecting 6500 people with their luggage to magically and orderly file one by one through the SINGLE DOORWAY into the cruise terminal. Check.

I’m not making that up.

Carnival Cruise Lines, you are a mystery to me. The sheer logistics of running even one of your ships must be mind boggling, yet you do it all the time. But with this one tiny hiccup that could have so easily been managed in a minute on the back of a cocktail napkin, you chose the worst and most dangerous option available.

It was, quite simply, one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen, and that’s really saying something, because I’m raising teenage boys.

Your Captain should be keelhauled.

Do better,

-Smidge

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Wednesday, June 28, 2023

I'm on a Boat!

We are on a cruise ship right now. I mean, if everything went as planned, we’re on a cruise ship right now. I purposely didn’t bring my laptop on the cruise, due to obvious moisture concerns (many of our cruise group spill their drinks regularly), so I wrote this column before we left.

We should be in the Caribbean by now, and rest assured, I am disappointed if we haven’t seen pirates yet. I will report on my findings when I retrieve my laptop from the desk at Miami International Gate J15, where I left it for safekeeping. I’ll just grab it on my way back through later this week.

This is my first cruise, so I was on a steep learning curve as far as preparations went. There was a lot to learn. Since it’s cruise season (they tell me), I want to impart some of the knowledge I’ve gleaned in this process so any other rookie cruisers can benefit from my experience.

There are some things you’ll need ahead of time.

First and foremost is a cool cruise group name. Chances are, you’ll be cruising with friends, and apparently you can’t show up to the ship without a group name. Prior to sailing, we hadn’t picked a winner, but our tentative list of choices was:

Feeling Nauti

On Cruise Control

All Hands On Derek (This one really only works for us since one of our cruise group is named Derek. Otherwise, you’d have to find a Derek in Miami, and that can get dicey.)

Tropic Like It’s Hot

I’d Sailor

The Prostates of the Caribbean

Nauti Beaches

I Like Big Boats and I Cannot Lie

The Caribbean Wine Mixer (Only funny to Step Brothers fans. So, obviously, really funny!)

We Shore Did

Oh, Ship!

and

Vitamin Sea

You can all vote for your favorite and I’ll let you know what we landed on later when I get back to Gate J15 and the nice man who offered to watch my computer for me.

The second important thing you’ll need to bring is all of your money. You’ll spend most of it up front, of course, but you’ll need to bring the rest for tips and “incidentals.” Incidentals are defined as half the things to do or eat on the boat that conveniently are not included in the exorbitant base price.

The third thing you’ll need, about a month before departure, is an Amazon account, a full tank of gas in your wife’s car, and a clear path to the Amazon returns counter at Kohl’s. I wasn’t aware of this, but apparently, it’s illegal for women to bring any previously worn or even previously owned clothes onto a cruise ship. This law resulted in Amazon corporate deciding to just dedicate one driver solely to our home address. His name is Steve. Great guy. I’m his kids’ godfather now.

The fourth thing you’re going to want for your cruise is non-hurricane-y weather. As I write this, Tropical Storm Bret is making its way through the Caribbean, with Tropical Storm Cindy right behind it, preparing to wreak havoc on our cruising path. Now, it will be what it will be, and I’m sure we’ll have a fun time no matter what, but news reports about tropical storms can lead your wife, as it did mine, to some late panic shopping on Amazon.

Panic shopping isn’t good for anyone. Especially Steve. He looked tired when he dropped us off at the airport in his Amazon van.

Ahoy,

-Smidge

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Wednesday, September 28, 2022

A Soggy Regatta

I was treated to one of the most entertaining sporting events barely known to mankind on Monday. A sixty-five and older men’s soccer league match, you ask? No, even better than that. I attended a high school physics class cardboard boat race.

I know what you’re thinking. "Oh, how fun. The kids got to make model boats and float them in a tub of water."

No. The kids had to make full-size boats out of wood with cardboard hulls, put either two or three high school students in each boat and race them across the Olympic-size swimming pool.

It was epic.

The design criteria was simple. The outer hull shall be cardboard. No direction was given past that. So, as you may imagine, there were a variety of different size and shaped vessels come regatta day. (It should be noted that prior to launching, each boat was wrapped in plastic so the cardboard didn’t just melt away in the water.)

One team built a legitimately reusable wooden canoe. On the opposite end of that spectrum, one team appeared to have simply gathered four intact medium-size moving boxes together in a rectangle and duct taped them together. When it was time to race, each of the three rowers just sat in a box. It actually worked pretty well.

I was blessed to attend this aquatic catastrophe because Son Number One and his buddy had taken over my garage for a few weeks building what can only be described as an inverted doghouse. It was constructed of fence boards and 2x4’s, and was big enough to fit both of them, or had they flipped it over, three adult Great Danes.

They formed a bow and a stern (those are the official nautical terms for front and back of a huge, inverted doghouse) with PVC pipes, and then, of course, covered the entire thing in cardboard.

They did some physics calculations at some point with regard to expected buoyancy - after they built the whole boat, of course – and decided that they’d better add some outriggers made out of five-gallon water jugs, and also bring some weight plates along to ride with them in the USS Casa de Perro.

It seemed as if, on paper, at least, four hundred pounds of dudes was not going to be enough weight to get their craft low enough in the water to be stable.

They were right.

Race day came and the “boats” went into the pool in heats of three at a time. It became immediately obvious that every team spent whatever time they allotted for the project solely on design and build. Not one team spent a single minute working on paddling technique prior to the race.

A watercraft consisting solely of the lid to an Ikea entertainment center shipping box is going to naturally be hard to steer, but even more so if you had no plan whatsoever before the starting gun.

There were a lot of collisions

Fortunately for the spectators, the high schoolers in the boats were acting like high schoolers, so entertainment was in no short supply. One team had Viking helmets and a bucket, specifically for drenching their enemies.

The ROTC ladies had two rowers and a machine gunner, manning twin Super Soaker water rifles from the bow.

In heat three, when it was time for the doghouse to race, external sabotage was not its downfall. Son Number One and his buddy made it about a third of the way across the pool before the sheer physics of the situation became too much for them to overcome, and the world’s most unstable boat capsized in spectacular fashion.

The Ikea box finally passed the shipwreck, after running into it twice, to win heat three. The semi-finals were filled with high seas drama, as the canoe was completely swamped twice by Viking bucket fire and still came in second.

The Ikea Pirates were finally dragged down to Davy Jones’ locker, and the rectangular moving boxes got taken out by the ROTC boat’s machine gunner, right before they were rammed by a skiff made entirely out of cereal boxes.

It was a ten-foot-long contraption that looked like a cross between a canoe and a coal barge that ended up taking first place in the extended up-and-back final race. It was in the process of sinking when they made it back to the wall.

The good news for Son Number One and all involved was that grading for the project was not based on sea worthiness. If you showed up with a boat of any kind, you got credit.