FNN Report: Bermuda!
FNN Report: Travel Reporter Goes To Bermuda On The New NCL Breakaway
FNN travel reporter, Gina Vagabond, recently cruised to Bermuda on the brand new NCL Breakaway that sailed from New York City. She filed this report about her voyage.
What an exciting week! This new ship is gorgeous and filled with activities, great restaurants and tiny staterooms. All in all, the week I spent onboard was the most exciting in my life and the excitement had nothing to do with the ship.
Here is my daily account of the cruise.
Day 1: The ship was escorted out of the New York City harbor by a Fire Department fireboat shooting streams of water in the air from its water cannons. At one point a cannon became mis-aimed and hosed down the passengers lining the side of the ship to watch the water display and wave at the fireboat crew. No serious injuries were reported but there were many angry, wet passengers who promised to contact lawyers as soon as the ship returned to NYC.
Day 2: Somewhere in the North Atlantic Ocean, we were attacked by a decrepit WWII German U-boat. The U-boat’s ancient captain order the Breakaway to stop engines so the U-boat’s crew could board the vessel. The Breakaway’s valiant passengers defended the Breakaway by hurling beer bottles (empty) at the U-boat as we easily sped away from the submarine.
Day 3: Still in the Atlantic Ocean, the ship had to detour three times to rescue survivors from separate yachts that mysteriously sank in the Bermuda Triangle. The survivors told tales of horror floating in water surrounded by rabid schools of minnows.
Day 4: Bermuda. During the afternoon of our first day in port, the ship was assaulted by the notorious Towel Pirates. They swarmed around the ship in motorized dinghies, rappelled up the side of the ship, stole beach towels drying on balconies and made their getaway with hundreds of damp towels.
Day 5: Bermuda: The local motorbike association hosted a competition between the Breakaway passengers and a second ship docked at the same port. Both ships tied up alongside a concrete dock hundreds of yards long. A dozen passengers from each ship lined up at one end of the dock and raced two at a time down the pier in elimination trials. Many of the bikes hit sixty miles a hour midway down the course. The winner was a 82 year old woman whose bike hit a high speed of 15 MPH. She was the only biker who managed to cross the finish line and stop the bike before going off the end of the dock.
Later on, two salvage ships showed up to fish out the bikes. There was a jurisdictional dispute about salvage territories resulting in a savage gunfight. No one was wounded but the ships took multiple bullet holes in the hull and both sank. Breakaway security later apprehended and ticketed the winner for drunk driving in her motorized wheelchair. She claimed she had drunk a magnum of champaign from her loving cup trophy. The woman was accused of injuring fifteen passengers by running over their toes.
Day 6: Bermuda: In a well-established Bermudian tradition, inebriated, kilt-wearing bagpipers serenaded the ship as it left Bermuda. After that, they marched lemming-style into the sea where a waiting trawler scooped them up in its nets to prevent loss of life.
Day 7: In the North Atlantic: Seal Team Six in a practice exercise, attack the ship and commandeered it. After forcing the ship to sail in circles for several hours, the Seals jumped overboard and disappeared.
Day 8: Our arrival back into New York was delayed by a massive traffic jam in the Lower Harbor near the Statue of Liberty. The rush-hour pile up involved a Staten Island Ferry, two tug boats, seven garbage scows (full), two freight barges, a multi-million dollar yacht, a Coast Guard cutter and four rowboats. It took hours to pluck the crews from the water and clear the wreckage.
All in all, I experienced a most unforgettable week. Oh, and the cruise was pretty cool too.
Hank Quense is the author of 50 published short stories along with four novels and three collections of stories. All of these are humorous and/or satiric scifi and fantasy. In the non-fiction area, he has over a dozen articles published on fiction writing and he’s the author of the Fiction Writing Guides series and the Self-publishing Guides series. Both series consist of a number of ebooks. The Fiction Writing Guides and the Self-Publishing Guides are an outgrowth of his lectures on both subjects.
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