American Cruise Lines introduced a new ship design, the “Coastal Cat”, last year. Our ship for this cruise, American Glory, is one of the first four they built – and according to the captain, it’s also one of the last four they’re going to build.
The problem is the opening at the front of the ship – oncoming waves can accumulate there with no outlet, so the ship has to rise to let the water out…and then it crashes down. It doesn’t take huge waves to trigger the effect, as everyone on the ship discovered at 2am.
Conditions improved after a couple of hours, but there were a lot of bleary eyes at breakfast.
We only had one excursion planned for today, a dolphin-watching cruise on the Dolphin Explorer. They’ve been studying the resident dolphins for more than a decade, so unlike a whale-watching cruise, they were sure we’d get to see dolphins up close…and they were right.
We didn’t just see dolphins, of course; we also enjoyed good views of seabirds.
We even got a very good view of the rare Florida Beach Deere!
They gave us about 45 minutes to explore a barrier island – which mostly meant shelling, though I spent more time taking pictures.
We had one last dolphin sighting on the way back to the American Glory.
We set sail for Key West just before sunset; I’m hoping for a quieter night tonight!
