Missing the ship! This is what all of us Cruisers and Crew all fear.

You will hear in this blog one of the best close call missing the ship experience ever!

Lets start out with a little background info about the ship. If it says back on board at 4:30 it means you need to be back at least in the line to get on ship at that time, and at 5:00 the ship will sail away.

If your missing on the ship they will go into your room and find your passport and give it to the dock agent, and will help you figure out what to do next. On Carnival I have seen people miss the ship and have to pay for their own transportation to the next port, or back home. Usually the captain will let you on on the next port but will have to have a "chat" with you...

One of the crew's favorite things to do is to go out on the deck and watch the late guests run and sometimes miss the ship. We even make bets and its sad, but also funny.

After reading the post, I would love to hear some of your stories of your close calls in the comments section.

My close call... this is a great story!

In Cozumel, I was asked to join the golf pro and production singer in a round of golf 40 mins (boat ride) away from the island of Cozumel. We jumped on a tender (smaller boat) that was taking guests to the main land for excursions at no cost. They told us to be back at the dock to re board the tender no later than 3:30 because back on board the cruise was 4:30. We had a great day at a beautiful golf coarse. We arrived at the dock around 3:20 and noticed that no other guests were around and the boat was not around. After a few minutes we asked someone what happened to the tender, and they told us that it left an hour earlier because it was hot and all the guests were back early. So we sat there going... ummmmm uh oh!

They told us a dock 2 miles down the beach might have a boat to take us back. So we ran as fast as we can down the beach with our golf clubs, hot, exhausted and mile down the beach we realized how we don't have time to make it. So now we are in the middle of the beach at 3:45 looking to the water (cruise ship out of site) going, we are so fired. (it is not a good thing to miss the ship as crew) We saw a guy with a boat on the beach and asked him if he would take us to Cozumel, and negotiated as much as we can, and he said he can get someone. He radioed a friend and we sat and waited and waited, and about 10 nerve wrecking minutes later he came to the beach, and we had to run out to the boat, in chest deep water, with our clubs over our heads. Climbed in the small boat and had them take us in a tiny boat through the ocean, with LARGE waves crashing and soaking us.

We realized that we might make it, and we had our hopes up. Then we could see the ship in the distance, and still did not realize how far away we were from it we were more excited that we would actually make it. Finally it was 4:20 and we were about 10 minutes away, and bad news, they told us they had to drop us off at a dock that would be a 15 minute cab ride away from the port.. We said, "out of the question, we know the captain, radio him and he will allow us on the dock." They did not have the correct frequencies, and so we talked them in to dropping us off at a dock close by the ship at a private resort. We arrived, (paid the guy a painful $300) and jumped on the dock, with a security guard telling us we couldn't. It was 4:30 (back on board time) so we ran past the guard ignoring him... Now we are running again another mile to the ship and scared to arrive seeing the ship pulling away. We were all so exhausted that it almost felt hopeless. Finally we arrived at the ship at 4:50 with the crew pulling the last ramps away and luckily without hesitation the security was nice and let us on. So after a shower and a couple hours sleep it was back to work as usual. Wow, what a scary close call.

Stay tuned for next weeks blog where I actually missed the ship... and what happened next!

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