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Andrew Tobias
Andrew Tobias

Money and Other Subjects

Ship’s Log III

December 17, 2012December 17, 2012

My apologies for last weeks’ erratic posts.  They should all be there now.

My first-cruise-ever was pretty great, but a few final observations and a suggestion.  First off, if “you are what you eat,” I am surely by now a smoked salmon.  I spent a fortune on the cruise, but if you price out the smoked salmon I consumed — for breakfast, for lunch, for snacks for dinner — I made a profit on the deal.  I can now swim upstream with the best of them . . . handy for a contrarian investor.  (Show me a trout that ever beat the Dow and I’ll show you a trout who’s at least one quarter salmon.)  Second, if your fellow cruisers are, like you, deeply concerned about their carbon footprints, then perhaps a cruise — we burned 33,000 gallons of diesel fuel a day  — is not the best venue for the discussion.  But what an amazing thing: a floating hotel, built in Italy two years ago, with a Dutch name (“the Nieuw Amsterdam”), flying a French flag, owned by a British-American firm, cruising in the Caribbean, staffed by 888 mainly Indonesians and Filipinos serving baked Alaska to the aforementioned Egyptian (and 2,110 others).

And yet everywhere we went — 326 nautical miles to Half Moon Cay, the cruise line’s private island; 507 nautical miles to Jamaica; 251 to Grand Cayman (“Hey, hey!  Ho, ho!  Tax evaders have to go!”); 350 to an island off Honduras; 815 back to Ft.  Lauderdale (where 2,111 of us disembarked by 10am so 2,111 fresh cruisers board two hours later) — was essentially the same: a crowded little beach packed with lounge chairs; rum funnies; a snorkeling option; and festive music that should not be playing before sunset, let alone at 11am.

So here’s my suggestion.  Steam to Half Moon Cay, have a nice day.  Then, as the sun is setting, go a few miles out to sea, keep enough power on to churn the water a bit and make the boat rumble and vibrate — occasionally clank some stuff — and “arrive” in port the next morning, by which time the beach chairs have been swapped out for a different color, the signage has changed, and — well, you get the idea.  Welcome to Jamaica, Mon!  It’s basically what Disney does: all the rides are identical, as you sit in little tubs that travel around a track up and down and around through tunnels on whose walls are projected the dinosaurs you would see if you were a caveman, with appropriate narration and sound effects, the stars you would see if you were an astronaut, the dragons you would see if you were a Hobbit — whatever.

Think of the fuel it would save!  I’m on to something here.

 

 

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