The passage from Florida to Grand Bahama and back is one of the shortest and cheapest cruise ship journeys anywhere. In fact when times are bad, millions of spam messages appear giving them away “free” (except for taxes, port fees, drinks, portholes, and anything you do on Grand Bahama that actually involves having fun).

The cruise ship terminal is in an industrial port, with a big container transshipment facility, dry dock, oil storage, and limestone quarry.

One of Grand Bahama’s biggest exports is the island itself, which is being dug up, shipped out, and used in steelmaking. The long-term prospects for this are worrying, but in the short term it is creating more waterfront property. Since the port is a major industrial area, it is not a great place to be a tourist, so to actually enjoy Grand Bahama you need to pay extra to take a tour. If any tourists read this, take a tour when you come to Grand Bahama, because the harbor sucks.

Right now the economy is good, the ship is full, and the spam is not being spammed, so we can take the trip with a clean conscience.

Actually we are only taking the second half of the trip, from Freeport back to Palm Beach. We boarded the ship in the early afternoon, had lunch at the buffet, and hung out by the pool.

Poolside entertainment included vegetable caterpillar crafting…

…a junkanoo rush…

… musical chairs, celebrity bingo, and something called “cornholing”. Apparently that means something entirely different on cruise ships.

A bit after five o’clock, as the sun set…

… our mighty vessel sidled out through the shark-infested channel (there’s a sushi joint at the channel mouth where they throw the scrap fish into the water for a scheduled feeding frenzy every hour), and dropped anchor just offshore. If we made straight for Florida we would get there at three in the morning, so we have some time to kill. The cruise schedule is optimized to maximize drink purchases.

Dinner (included in the ticket) was pretty good…

… and so was the show later. All in all a far more civilized way of getting to Florida than flying.