October 20, 1991: A Day at Sea
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I flew down to Florida the evening of October 18th, right after finishing a class in Kansas City; Grant had already gone down to Fort Lauderdale a week earlier. Don and Patty arrived that same evening, late, and brought their rental car by the condo, visited with us for a while, and then went to the nearby Riverside Hotel just a few blocks away.were to arrive on Friday night also, and stay at the Riverside Hotel just a few blocks from the condo. On Friday morning, the air conditioner went on the blink, and there was no time to get someone to come fix it that day. So on sailing day, we were without air conditioning, and it was still warm here. We would have to have it attended to when the cruise was over.

On Saturday morning, Don and Patty came to the condo at noontime, and we loaded the rental car with all our stuff. I drove them down to the cruise ship port and dropped them off at the Costa Riviera. I drove the rental car back to the rental location and had the rental car people return me to the ship.

Boarding the Costa Riviera

I am creating this page in 2016, and wanted to do the same for the Costa Riviera as I have done for the other ships on which Fred and I have cruised. I would like to include deck plans to orient you to the ship, but sadly the ship was scrapped in the late 1990s, undoubtedly because it was too small for what cruising had by then become; cruisers were looking for ships with all the amenities- multiple pools and lounges, huge dining rooms, arcades, public rooms, shops and all sorts of entertainment activities.

So the kinds of things that I would like to have included here are no longer available- things like deck plans, descriptions, a detailed cruise itinerary, and so on. About all I could find were a few stock photos- one of which is at left. I suppose it is no great loss, though. Since the room Grant and I had, as well as all the locations we frequented on the ship are all now scrapped and recycled, pinpointing these on deck plans would seem an exercise without purpose.

I was able to find some statistics about the ship in which you may be interested:

Ship Type: Gross Tonnage: Length: Beam: Speed: Registry: Passengers:

Cruise Ship 27,906 702 ft. 94 ft. 24 knots Italy 1,400

I think the cruise gave Grant a lot to look forward to, and I'm glad about that. We had to make a lot of plans, though, regarding his medications.

We had to take his and various medications with us, and have the ship keep some of them refrigerated. Grant uses a tremendous amount of material each day- almost all of it disposable. We had to make arrangements with the cruise line to dispose of the used materials safely, and we had to plan what the cabin steward would have to help us with. But with the help of the cruise line, the ship's crew and CIGNA, everything got arranged satisfactorily.

When I got back from the rental center, all our luggage had been tagged, and people were beginning to queue up for the embarkation procedures. That took quite a bit of time. I think we were in line for at least an hour before we had our documents inspected and were allowed to board the ship. I could tell that Grant was excited, and I was very pleased, although I also knew that he wasn't feeling as well as he would like.

As soon as we got on board, we went right to see our cabin, which was in a very convenient place for getting to the public areas of the ship. There will be some pictures of it tomorrow, but it was very nice for an interior cabin. Don and Patty had an outside cabin, although it turned out that it wasn't really worth the effort to get it.

The next item we had to take care of was to change our dinner seating. Through a miscommunication, Grant and I had been signed up for the late dinner seating, which is at 8:30 p.m., while Don and Patty had received the early seating at 6:30 p.m. We wanted to switch to that earlier seating, since Grant often gets tired in the evening, and sometimes takes a nap arount nine or so. So we went to the Lounge where the purser had set up a table for those wishing to change their dinner seating. It turned out that there was no problem doing that, and we also requested a four-person table so we could be alone with Don and Patty. That we got also.

Mary Jackson and Her Daughter Lynn McDuff (At Dinner on October 24th)

But while we were in line, something significant happened. We were in line right behind an older woman who was very talkative, introducing herself to everyone, and answering questions from those who had not cruised before, including Grant and I. She was a very nice woman, and you could tell that not only was she pretty well off, but she had cruised a number of times before. I could tell that when she saw Grant she knew at once that he was quite ill, although she didn't say anything. She talked to him (and me) and looked in his direction often. She was quite nice.

Pretty soon, a young woman approached and got in line with the older lady in front of us. She was introduced to us as Lynn McDuff, and Lynn introduced us to her mother, Mrs. (Mary) Jackson. Lynn, we found out, is married, but since her husband was occupied she accompanied her mother on this particular cruise. Lynn took one look at Grant, smiled warmly, and said to him "You and I will spend a lot of time together." I got the impression that she had instantly sized up the situation- but I wasn't at all sure how.

Grant and I then found out through conversation that Lynn was a teaching nurse; she travels to various hospitals conducting seminars in some particular equipment and procedures marketed by the company she works for. She and her family, as well as her mother, whom I think was divorced, live near Seattle.

Lynn was very gracious and as good as her word; she and Grant did spend a lot of time together and she helped me look out for him. We talked frankly with her that very evening, and she said that she could tell immediately that Grant had AIDS; she had a number of friends in the same predicament. Lynn and her mother were very nice to both of us, and she continued to correspond with Grant once we got back to Dallas and she got back to Seattle.

Setting Sail Aboard the Costa Riviera

About two miles southeast of the condo the Intracoastal Waterway has a deep channel out into the ocean. The basin formed on the inside of this inlet is called Lake Mabel- actually just a fairly wide place in the waterway, which continues south all the way to Miami. Lake Mabel, and the docks along it, are the burgeoning cruise ship port for Fort Lauderdale. The map below, left, will show you where this port is located, relative to the condo.

The aerial view above, right, is current to about 2015, but the area is little changed from 1991- save for the new bridge that carries 17th Street over the Intracoastal just north of Lake Mabel. Most private craft can go under this bridge, and the cruise ships of the early 1990s could too, but today's mega-ships could not. In any event, you can see where the ships dock and the fact that it is easy for them to get directly out into the Atlantic.

After getting our dinner seating changed, we returned to the cabin to unpack. Once we got settled in the cabin, and Grant had a chance to lie down for a while, we went up on deck to watch the ship pull out of Ft. Lauderdale.

We went up on deck to watch the process of getting the ship out of Lake Mabel, through the Everglades Inlet, and out into the ocean. The afternoon of sailing was threatening; there were lots of dark clouds around and it seemed as if it could rain any time. That is why many of these first shots look so dark.

As it turned out, the Costa Riviera had pulled straight into its berth earlier today when it returned to port from its previous cruise. I guess this is standard practice. So I went first to the stern of the ship, and took the photograph at left of Lake Mabel and some of the ships in it.

This shot looks North along the Intracoastal Waterway towards the main part of Ft. Lauderdale. You can see another cruise ship docked over at the left; it was from the Princess Line, I think. The 17th Street bridge is in the middle of the picture. (This bridge was replaced some years later with a higher bridge to allow taller ships to pass underneath. The marina where Grant and I first went to look at boats when we came to Ft. Lauderdale for the first time is right at that bridge, with Pier 66 beyond it.

The Intracoastal Waterway comes South under that bridge and then continues South to my right, once again sheltered by the barrier island all the way to Miami.

Next, I left Grant with Patty and Don, and ran up to the bow of the ship so I could watch the men release the lines tying us to the dock. Those are some of the harbor freight facilities in the background. As the lines were released, the ship began to slowly back away from the dock in reverse, going out into the harbor stern first.

It was a slow, delicate procedure as the Captain backed the ship out into Lake Mabel. I wondered why, when the ship returns to port, it doesn't back into the dock so that when it departs it can head straight out, but I learned later that this is actually bad for a couple of reasons. The first is very practical; the ship would have to enter Lake Mabel, turn on a pivot 90° to point north, and then back up all the way into the dock. Backing up is not easy (kind of like trying to back up when you are towing a motor home) and is a bit imprecise, so colliding with the dock is hard to avoid. An experienced pilot with a good crew can do it, but it has to be done slowly and takes a good deal of time. This leads to another reason why it isn't done.

When the ship returns to port in the early morning, it is essential that passengers be debarked quickly to give the cleaning crews time to clean all the cabins and public areas and to give the the crew enough time to offload waste and reload with new supplies. Since the ship has to leave again by about 5PM, they need every minute they can get, and so wasting 45 of them backing into the dock is not something they want to do.

But aren't they just posponing the time-consuming "backing up" until the ship's departure time? Well, yes, but two factors come into play here. First, if you think about it, backing away from the dock is much less dangerous; you are backing out into relatively open water and there is little you can run into, and once you are clear of the end of the pier you can make your turn out to sea relatively easily. Also, since the cruise is beginning, the Captain is not under a time constraint. The ship is all loaded and cleaned and really the only penalty for taking extra time now is that he may have to go slightly faster to make his first port on schedule. This turns out not to be a problem at all, for the ship rarely goes as fast as it is capable of; the first two days of this cruise are at sea (with St. Thomas our first destination) and the ship goes at a leisurely pace anyway, so making up even an hour lost manoeuvering around Lake Mabel is inconsequential in the scheme of things.

Once the ship had backed away from the dock, the Captain put it in forward gear and we began to move through the Everglades Inlet channel and out to sea. We took a series of four pictures as we were heading out through the Everglades inlet into the Atlantic Ocean.

Looking Out to Sea Through the Everglades Inlet The weather looks more threatening than it actually was, but I had the exposure of the camera set a bit low. Just at the left edge are condominiums that border the north side of the inlet; Dania Beach State Park is on the south side of the inlet.

Looking Back and the Condominiums Bordering the Inlet We heard airhorn blasts as we passed these condos; I was to find out later that one of the condo owners salutes each ship that leaves the harbor. He has schedules to tell him when the various ships are leaving; the vast majority of them leave on Saturday afternoon and arrive back on Saturday morning.

Grant and I have not been to that particular stretch of beach; it looks like there is a jetty there where watching the cruise ships would be interesting. Perhaps we can walk down there sometime. About this time Grant got to feeling a bit queasy, so he went back to the cabin to lie down. I promised him that I would return myself shortly so that we could get ready for dinner; I wanted to watch our departure for a while longer.

The Hotels and cCondominiums Along Fort Lauderdale Beach This picture looks North about four miles. It is late in the day and, as I said, the weather was a bit dark at times.

Looking Back at the Everglades Inlet The inlet is directly astern. To the left is Dania beach State Park. We have been there with Ty and Scott, and there is also a gay beach there as well. To the right are the same condos and hotels in the previous picture.

Ft. Lauderdale is not nearly so built up as Miami Beach, nor is it nearly so busy. There used to be a wild Spring Break celebration here until the city passed a resolution effectively banning it because of all the commotion. As it turns out, Spring Break had been bringing more money into the coffers of the city and the merchants than some people had realized, and the city wishes now that it had just tried to regulate things a bit rather than outlaw them completely.

I recall getting just a tiny bit nervous about this time. I do not recall ever having been so far from land before, and I knew that the water here was over my head (chuckle), so I also knew that if the boat were to sink now, well, I'd be hard pressed to carry Grant all the way back to shore, if I could do it at all. But those feelings, which I assume are quite natural, passed quickly, and pretty soon I was walking around the ship with no thought of what might happen if the Stockholm were to run into us. Anyway, about this time I bid fond farewell to dry land and went back to the room to see how Grant was doing.

We had a nice dinner, and I will talk more about eating on board the Costa Riviera a bit later along with my first pictures from an evening meal. Grant and I walked around the ship after dinner, visiting the show lounge, one of the nightspots, and the casino. We were just exploring to see what all there was. It had been a long day, so we were both in bed before midnight.

You can use the links below to continue to the next day of our Caribbean Cruise, or return to the Cruise Index Page from which you can continue through the photo album.

	October 20, 1991: A Day at Sea
	Return to the Caribbean Cruise Index