The cruise is quickly coming to an end. We sailed away from Ketchikan at about 1 p.m. this afternoon headed for Victoria, Canada. Well arrive there about 8 p.m. tomorrow (Friday) night.
There is a law (called the Jones Act) from the late 1800’s that prohibits ships of foreign registry from docking at two consecutive mainland US ports without going to a foreign port between them. I think the purpose was to prevent foreign shipping companies from going into competition with domestic shipping companies. Nevertheless, the affect on us is that we can’t dock in Seattle without first stopping at a foreign port. So, we’ll stop in Victoria, Canada (on the tip of Vancouver Island) for about 4 hours before sailing the rest of the way back into Seattle.
It’s been a good cruise and I think everyone has had a good, relaxing time. I’m sure that we’ve absolutely worn out mom and dad on this trip. They’ll be glad to get home and have some quiet time. However, meanwhile they’re having a good time and are very engaged with the cruising process.
This is our fourth cruise with Holland America and we’ve no experience with any other cruise line. Of the four, however, this one has had the most issues and would rank fourth in overall quality of the experience. That’s also partially our own fault but there’s quite a few issues that the cruise line could also address.
- This is the first time we’ve cruised when school was out. There are a lot of kids on the boat and that’s a first for us. Most of the time that’s no issue except when it comes to the pools and hot tubs.
- We booked four veranda rooms on the back of the boat. The result has been somewhat mixed.
- It’s been very nice to have the rooms next to each other and to have the doors between the verandas open. It has provided quick access between rooms.
- The verandas are large and the furniture is better than on previous cruises.
- However, we thought we’d get better views from the back of the boat. That didn’t turn out to be true. We can only see to the rear of the ship and it’s quite noisy back there! The decks are terraced so those folks above us see down into our veranda and we see down into the ones below us. Privacy is somewhat lacking.
- The smoke from the stacks goes right over the top of the boat and swirls back up along the back of the boat on occasion. Diesel smoke isn’t all that pleasant.
- This is a fairly new ship — it’s been in service about 15 months at most. There are too many things not working on the boat! Lots of elevators are out of service and others are iffy whether or not the door will close correctly. The hot tubs on the rear of the Lido deck have been "down for maintenance" almost the entire cruise. Ceiling panels are coming loose and a couple of them have been pulled down to prevent them from falling down and injuring someone.
- Speaking of hot tubs, while there are five of them on the boat (and two have been broken for most of the trip), they are all very small. Three or four people can be in them at the most. The hot tubs on the other three boats were large, spacious, and comfortably seated 8-9 people. These are small, quite uncomfortable, and not very deep.
I think we’ll stay with the older, smaller boats. We’ll definitely not cruise out of Seattle again to Alaska. It adds too much time to the cruise and we spend too much time out in the ocean away from the Inside Passage. Even then, because the boat is so big, we cruise a ways from the shore. The smaller boats sail closer to the shore with more interesting scenery.
Perhaps I’m being a little picky, however. We’ve had a wonderful time and have enjoyed being together on the boat. I’m sorry to see the vacation come to an end (although I’m plenty tired!). It seems strange that a week from today we’ll be homeless!! Our house sale in Colorado Springs closes next Thursday morning early and we’ll be on the road driving to Pocatello. The house there isn’t bought, yet, the company is looking for temporary housing for us, but so far no word on where or what that’ll be. We just might be living in the RV once again!