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!

We had a couple of hours free this morning before we had to take the bus to St. Petersburg to board the American Glory, so we went back to the Riverwalk. Last night, we’d walked north from the hotel; today, we walked to the southern terminus at Sparkman Wharf, where the big cruise ships dock. It’s also a popular eating and drinking area, but we were there far too early for any of the restaurants to be open, so it was pretty quiet and we left to go see the northern part of the Riverwalk in the daylight.

One of the first places we passed was the Heron Residences, which is ready for all of the winter holidays!

A bit farther along, we reached USF Park on the Riverwalk and paid our respects to the school’s mascot.

We saw pelicans chilling out on the pilings in the channel.

We walked as far as the University of Tampa and discovered that there are minarets on the buildings there (we couldn’t see them last night).

We returned to the hotel to meet the bus taking us to the Port of St. Petersburg and the American Glory to begin the cruise…soon enough, we were out on the water, along with many small boats enjoying the beautiful day.

We passed the Sunshine Skyway bridge about an hour after leaving port and headed into the Gulf of Mexico towards tomorrow’s port of call at Marco Island.

This afternoon, our guest lecturer Rachel Perkins talked about the hydrogeology of Florida (it’s complicated and interesting), and this evening we enjoyed Rob Ondras “Rockin’ on the River” (rockabilly with lots of Elvis). And of course there was food and drink – Luca Annunziata, a winner on Chopped, is the executive chef on the American Glory, and we’ve been enjoying his cooking!

We’re off to a great start!