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2/27/2015 Friday
Georgetown, Grand Cayman
Arrive 8am Depart 3pm

20150227 Friday GeorgeTown, Grand Cayman PhotoLink

The ship anchored a little off the south entry to Grand Cayman port. Tenders began running, but there were complications. We decided to go ashore around 0945 but waited and waited. Finally we got into the tender around 1020. We briefly wandered a short ways and into one store where D’s camera cord hooked onto a ceramic lizard and broke the head off the thing. So we bought it planning to glue it up later. She also bought some grandson gifts. Then we returned to the pier for our tour.

D wanted to do a Duck. So we did the Duck (a WW2 vehicle that runs on land or water, then called a DUKW). We seated ourselves with 30-some others in the conveyance. Justin started the thing and gave us a tour of the GeorgeTown area and up to Seven MIle Beach. The population is about 55,000 plus the non-residents. An astounding number of banks do business here.

Justin then took the Duck into the water and cruised around. We went over the wreck of the Cali, which sank in the ’40s - the crew went ashore, waves splashed into its cargo of rice which expanded and shifted. Then we went into a shallow area where the fish know they are going to get fed. Justin went through the area and fish came from all around to follow the Duck. We were all given bread to throw into the water where the fish fought for it. Very interesting for us, perhaps less so for the fish.

We came out of the water back onto land and drove back to the parking lot. After exiting and tipping, D & I looked in a couple of shops but bought nothing more.

We boarded the tender and returned to the ship about 1400. We started a load of laundry since the room was empty. About 1500, Ryndam got underway again and headed northwest to round Cuba and go to Tampa.

Later, we attended (again) the Sip-n-Serve with Christina presenting shrimp with Thai sauce. Very good. The wines were Spanish (tempranillo & viewmon?). They did well with the shrimp. Tampa Doug was there, dressed elegantly again in orange shirt and yellow shorts. He held forth on good wine stores in Tampa and good wine packages available on-line. He knows how to get the most for his money, no doubt about that. We’ll see them again tomorrow.

We dined at a table for six. One couple we’d dined with on this trip - a Canadian Naval type and his wife who live in the woods north of Halifax, NS. He served in the Canadian Navy from 1959 to 1993. Wow. We were able to connect with times we’d both spent at Roosevelt Roads base in eastern Puerto Rico. We also discussed the icebreakers Labrador and Mackensie, one RCN and the other the RCCG. He’d heard of a man I knew on our Northwest Passage trip in 1960 - Commodore O.C.S.Robinson.

The other couple were from Milwaukee - we could talk with them from my Wisconsin background. They even were able to recall the “Chalet on the Lake”, a locally famous restaurant that broadcast light classical music on WTMJ to which we listened in my youth. I and his wife razzed him slightly that he went to Minnesota for schooling - but he insisted that UW didn’t have a qualified curriculum in Veterinarian Medicine in those days.

It was nice to be able to talk across the smaller table tonight (see last nights entry).

We adjourned to our cabin, there to empty a bottle of tawny port so that we wouldn’t have to take it ashore. I can recommend Sandeman’s Ten Year Old Tawny Porto, aged in oak casks. The taste is very different from the ruby ports so many have had. It’s a lovely small glass at bedtime.

Then we wound down with books and retired.