MAR 01: from Miami to open sea

Today got off to a great start! 

For the first time since February 9th, 2018, I saw my nephew who lives here. He and his delightful family joined us for breakfast. We jumped from topic to topic, inter-weaving many stories and family information.

In my nephew's arms is that generation's only current male Norweb,
but hey, no pressure to keep the family name alive.

After breakfast, they went off in the proverbial cloud of dust, the parents needing two cars to get the kids where they needed to go. Pam and I returned to our room to close our bags and depart the hotel for SIRENA.

Looking out our 15th-story window, we saw the large multihull CARIBBEAN SPIRIT passing by, escorted by five police boats that aggressively chased any boats that ventured near it out of their course. I looked up the multihull and found it was a charter. We guessed one or more mega-celebrities were aboard. As of this writing, there is nothing in the news about it.

Only slightly whiplashed from the Miami taxicab equivalent of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party ride at an amusement park, we arrived at the ship terminal.

We must have hit a sweet spot in passenger arrivals. We proceeded non-stop through security and check-in. Within 15 minutes, we were aboard and seated comfortably in a lounge listening to string quartet music, awaiting the announcement that the rooms on our deck were ready.

Soon after we were in our stateroom, our bags arrived. We had dropped off our carry-ons as we entered the terminal. We shipped our big bags directly from home to SIRENA. Thank you, LuggageForward, for making our lives easier (and our backs happier).

We put one Apple and one Android tracker in each bag we ship. It is overkill, but that is how things sometimes go in a joint Apple/Samsung household. Thanks to updates from LuggageForward and our past experiences using them, there was no stress about the bags making it aboard before the ship departed—well, almost no stress. And it is fun to track the path the bags take from Marion to Miami.

SIRENA was scheduled to depart at 1600, and we did. Surrounded by terminals and for mega-ships, SIRENA pulled away from her puny one tucked in a remote corner of Port of Miami's Dodge Island. 

As we passed their base, a boat got underway to pick up our ship's harbor pilot once we were in open water.

red arrow points to our pilot boat

We slipped out the channel between private Fisher's Island and Miami's famous South Beach. Last year, when we left Ft. Lauderdale, we had a Coast Guard boat prominently displaying a 50-caliber machine gun to escort us out. We were on our own this year.

Ahead of us was ICON OF THE SEAS. 

She is currently the biggest cruise ship in the world. Some of her statistics are:

Note the qualifier "double occupancy"
on the number of guests. Her full
load-out can be as high as 7,600 guests.

As we headed to dinner at one of the specialty restaurants (Red Ginger), Miami fell quickly astern as we moved into the open ocean for two sea days before our first port of call.