The Jolly Roger Pirate Cruise

A few weeks back I mentioned that it was National Rum Day.  I also mentioned I had a great story about Rum Punch.

It was December of 2002.  I had been back in Illinois almost a year.  I don’t know why sister and family asked Mom, Dad and I to go on a cruise, but I think maybe we split the cost for our parents or something for their Christmas present that year.  Sister and husband had been on one before and wanted to take the kids this time around, because apparently they missed them so much when they went alone that it wasn’t funny.  ANYWAY...off we went that December for 7 days to the Southern Caribbean on the Royal Caribbean’s "Radiance of The Seas," two weeks before Christmas.  Having only a brief stint in the cruise industry I can tell you this is the best time to go…the most economical anyway.

Mom, Dad, the kids and I had never been on a cruise so this was an experience.  We flew into San Juan Puerto Rico, spent a night there and boarded the most enormous boat I had ever seen.  Like twice the size of Maquon. 

Puerto Rico was amazing and I would go back in a heartbeat.  The minute we got off the plane though, all of our hair went flat.  It was quite humid and much different from the snowy tundra we had left in Chicago.

Off we went on our adventure.  If you have never been on a cruise, it is only the kind of vacation I need to take, but it is not for everyone.  Especially if you experience sea-sickness.   There are tricks to dealing with that if anyone wants to know (not medicine related.) 

This was a beautiful boat.  The rooms scared the hell out of us, because two people could not move side by side in them, but you were rarely in your room, so it really didn’t matter.  We both had a walk out deck (which mom slept on most of the nights because Dad had issues with snoring), but it was breath taking.  A city on the water.  A mall, 15 restaurants, a theatre, water park, the list goes on…you would never have to leave the boat to have the whole world at your beck and call.

We however were all going to be in uncharted territory so there was no sitting on the boat all day for us.  We had a very hectic itinerary actually…I wish I could remember the days in their exact order but we went to St. Thomas, St. Maarten, Antigua, St. Lucia and Barbados.  That may have been the order I don’t know.

I want so bad to talk about all of it, the boat, the scenery, the stops, our activities…but that is not what this blog is about.  It is about Rum Punch.

We tried to do an “excursion” at each port.  Sometimes we did the ones set up by the ship, and sometimes we did them on our own, which is a lot cheaper, but you have to know what you are doing and you have to be able to get back to the ship in time or it will leave you.

In Antigua, for whatever reason the adults minus Mom, decided to do the Jolly Roger Pirate Cruise.  Mom volunteered to stay on the boat and hang out at the pool with the kids.  If the truth be known I probably chose this experience.  I mean really…a giant pirate ship that takes a bunch of grown adults on a 3 hour tour to a mysterious cove and all the Rum Punch you can drink?  This is a no-brainer.

So off we go.  Jolly Roger here we come.  And we went all right.  So it was not an authentic Pirate Ship, but it was a darn good replica.  Had a real plank you could walk, a rope swing you could fly off of and seriously, all the Rum Punch you could drink.  The cove it took us to was beautiful.  What I can remember of it.  If you wanted to swim a ways you could swim from the boat to the shore and buy whatever your little heart desired.  The island people came out of nowhere with their “goods.”  I have no idea how my father swam to shore (sister said he took a shuttle), or jumped off the boat, or walked the plank for that matter, but he ended up on the shore and disappeared for a while in the “Caribbean Cocklebur” with some island woman named Rosie.  He said she was showing him to the bathroom, we will never know and I will personally never care.

Dad walking the plank...scary I know

The thing about Rum Punch is you do not know how much Rum Punch you have had until you stop drinking it.  We drank it for a solid 3 hours.  Obviously, Dad and brother-in-law have a better metabolism, so they just did crazy things like jump off the ship and stuff. 

Sister, she fell over the cannon.  Cut her shin.  Still has the scar to prove it.  Replica cannons, but still the same size as a real one would be.  And I, in standard Tiffany style, ended up in the “bottom-employee only section” of the Jolly Roger with a staff member trying to find out where all the free stuff was.  No one missed me because they were so pie eyed, they had no idea I was even gone.  I did get a skull bandana out of the trip down there and invited to dinner that night by a very nice but creepy (can you say those two words together) young, Antiguan native.  When we returned back to shore I think I ran back to the boat, partly in fear of being followed by him.

Sister and Fathers glasses were empty...

Sisters tango with the cannon left a giant bruise on her leg, but that was not the worst of it.  When you are on a ship for so many days, hours really, and then you get off and walk on solid ground, you get sea legs.  You “feel funny” walking on solid ground…wobbly.  When you add drinking 3 hours worth of Rum Punch it adds a whole new dimension to the word wobbly.  I have no idea how we all got back to the rooms in one piece, but when we did, Sister begged the kids to stop moving the boat.  Poor children.  They were little.  They didn’t know why she was laughing hysterically and screaming for someone to stop moving the boat. 

Sister doing the rope swing

I don’t care what was in the Rum Punch.  We were in the middle of the Caribbean, on a fake Pirate Ship with 100 complete strangers, drinking as much as we could and acting like fools.  By far one of the best days of my life.  You simply cannot duplicate days like this.  And it is hard to describe the hilarity of sister screaming at as all to make the boat stop moving (as we were docked the whole time.)

She made it to dinner that night, which was a huge deal because dinner every night was one of the highlights of the evening, however she got sick and had to return (run back) to the room half way through.

This picture pretty much sums up how she was feeling!