PATIENCE? PATIENCE? how patient would YOU be under the circumstances?

You could've dropped in on my bro-in-law in Panama City...but I doubt you'd like him either....

Honestly, if they let passengers off the ship, I might have been one of them.

So impressive reading these last few posts and the knowledge shared (with a little humor tossed in).

The logistics you have discussed are all true. No cruise ship just pulls into a port and expects an open dock and 30,000 pounds of bananas magically ready to be loaded aboard the ship.

Back to the Navy, if a Carrier in Gitmo (Guantanamo Bay) needed a Wooden relief valve, and that valve was in Anchorage, Alaska, that valve was put on a plane and flown to Gitmo overnight. No questions asked. The ship had to be placed back in service - ASAP. On a cruise ship, I cannot imagine the communications that must occur when a part breaks, a port closes, or the bars run out of lemon peels or olives.

Either the ship informs us of every option, every 15-minutes, feeding constant confusion and elevating anxieties -- OR -- the ship always keeps extra lemons and olives aboard to keep the passengers pleasantly inebriated - just case. After all, more drinks equals more happiness (except on those Carnival 3-day booze junkets).

Ah yes........ Those darn pesky logistics..................

Not that the guy (or woman) who is at the guest services desk bitching to the poor representative on duty about how their vacation is now ruined ever thinks about any of that stuff.

As AuntPinkie said, better to have happened in port than on the high seas. Of course this will totally bugger any attempt through the canal and this has just become at best a 20 day Caribbean cruise. The canal is very busy and ships are booked months in advance so trying to squeeze one in on short notice is difficult at best. I suspect that NCL will have to rebook the canal first and then do the dance to make that happen as this ship needs to be on the west coast for this summer season. Wonder how many cruises this one will affect.

I don't think he's working for NCL anymore. I saw him on an episode of Deadliest Catch. He's working on a crab boat now. Said he wanted a less stressful job.

[quote=Yankee47]

Capt Ernesto Guglielmo del Porto von Rammensfjord

Yes yes yes....but i will tell you, that had I been a passenger...Capt Ernesto Guglielmo del Porto von Rammensfjord could very well have interrupted the cabin sitting or rail leaning every couple of hours with some kind of "progress report", real or imagined, factual or invented...and ...announce that his next update will be at such and such a time....would've kept the unwashed masses occupado....instead, latrine rumors can spread faster than well....you fill in faster than whatever...this is a family blog (sometimes unfortunately) and the angst and ire over the lack of olives or lemons doesn't help....seems to me every time we learn of one of these the main complaint is that the passengers know squat.....once upon a time I learned to appreciate the value of a well delivered lie....

This probably caused some serious heartburn amongst the "logistics department" at NCL. Just imagine what it must take to get a serious repair of a cruise ship undertaken in a foreign port, AND THEN come up with a revised itinerary. It's not like the captain of the ship can say " just pull into the marina over there and have the mechanic on duty look at it, then after we get back underway we'll just head over to Cozumel for a night".

The amount of information going back and forth over the phone lines and internet must be intense, with engineers conversing and troubleshooting with the maintenance crew. If parts (and/or people) needed to be flown in from the shipbuilder (Werft-Germany) to Columbia to complete the repairs, then all sorts of documentation needed to be completed and approved. The bureaucracy had to be spun up to quickly address the issues, (no easy task).

Now, add to all that the attempts to contact alternative port's authorities to see if the NCL Sky can be added to their port schedule for any given day, or for the port of Cartagena to redirect the ships that were due to occupy the spot where the Sky had sat for a couple days longer than anticipated. Of any of the alternate ports that could take the Sky, they would have to be within the ships maximum cruising range, have the infrastructure to accommodate the ship and it's guest, and have a slip available at that time.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. The ships crew didn't regularly update the guests because they probably didn't know themselves for many hours as to exactly what was going to happen.

LMAO...Not that you could have done anything about it anyway....as I have opined on the subject many times...been my .02 that anyone who has put on a uniform for any length of serious time can tolerate almost anything...especially since you're surrounded by other characters doing the same thing under the same circumstances. (I considered it a massively successful day if all I saw was green smoke...not red..If I had any brains whatsoever back then, I would have enlisted in something else..at least got 3 hots and a cot most of the time..and stayed drier...my only excuse was being young, dumb and...you know the rest)) )Not so on a cruise ship, as you dayumm well know..that missing lemon twist for example.However, i do reserve the right to p & moan as much as i feel like...theres enough bars...

Nothing in life is perfect (for most of us). Glitches happen, suitcases get misplaced, power is interrupted, you get caught with the maid, the lemon twist is not served with your drink order.

Most are minor inconveniences, and a great story to tell to your grandchildren. Not all, obviously.

I have missed a port due to a storm, yet ported elsewhere. When I looked out the next day from my balcony -- I saw two aircraft carriers across the bay that I was at the launching ceremony of one, and the keel laying ceremony of the other. I was one of the initial pre-commissioning crew (number 115 of 5,000) for CVN-69 Dwight D. Eisenhower. Across the San Diego harbor, in my aft cabin view were the USS Vinson (CVN-70) and the USS Roosevelt (CVN-71). A once in a lifetime experience -- all because of a weather inconvenience. My patience for the missed port was WELL rewarded.