{"id":20017,"date":"2014-02-11T01:00:38","date_gmt":"2014-02-11T09:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/?p=20017"},"modified":"2014-02-11T01:00:38","modified_gmt":"2014-02-11T09:00:38","slug":"20017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/?p=20017","title":{"rendered":"Cruise Lines, Passengers In A Fog In Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span style=\"font-size:14px;\"><span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">The current four-letter word for cruise-ship passengers in Texas is F-O-G. Ordinarily, it&#39;s a three-letter word that nobody on a cruise ship cares much about&hellip;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span style=\"font-size:14px;\">Until your ship can&#39;t leave and consequently that Caribbean port you badly wanted to visit is now off the itinerary.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span style=\"font-size:14px;\">Until your ship can&#39;t return when it&#39;s scheduled to return, and by then your plane has left, you have to spend a night in a hotel and you&#39;re in danger of missing Sunday dinner at Aunt Clara&#39;s.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span style=\"font-size:14px;\">Until it impacts on safety, and in this era that rarely happens but it could happen in Houston&#39;s ship channel (above) where cruise and cargo vessels don&#39;t have a lot of elbow room &mdash; or margins of error.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span style=\"font-size:14px;\">At various times this January, ships in Houston-Galveston waters have been on fog lockdown, either stuck in port or out in the bay waiting to get back. Visibility at both <a href=\"http:\/\/www.visithoustontexas.com\/\">Houston<\/a> airports has ranged between 1\/16th and 1\/8th of a mile. This is not a new problem. Talented travel writers Harry and Joan Shattuck has lived in Houston for 43 years (and we&#39;ve been friends almost all of that time) and have become so accustomed to foggy Januarys that Harry can&#39;t remember one without fog.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span style=\"font-size:14px;\">Also some Februarys, Marchs&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span style=\"font-size:14px;\">The good news this week is, now that the Pacific Northwest cold front that caused all this has left, Texans expect to have clear skies by the weekend.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span style=\"font-size:14px;\">Almost three years ago, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.carnival.com\/\">Carnival<\/a> President Gerry Cahill told Harry that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.galveston.com\/default.asp\">Galveston<\/a> was an attractive place to cruise from but its port officials &quot;had to get a handle on fog to make things work long-term.&quot;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span style=\"font-size:14px;\">At that time, there were no ships in Houston. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.princess.com\/index.html\">Princess<\/a> started sailing from Houston this winter and, at last count, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.princess.com\/learn\/ships\/cb\/index.html\">Caribbean Princess<\/a> had cruises delayed four times. <a href=\"http:\/\/www2.ncl.com\/\">Norwegian<\/a> will be there next year. When you think of the logistical nightmare that fog can cause for the cruise lines, not to mention its passengers, it begs the question:<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span style=\"font-size:14px;\">How long can they afford to continue running mid-winter cruises from Texas?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span style=\"font-size:9px;\"><em>Photo by&nbsp;Louis Vest<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-size: 13px; text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12028\" height=\"125\" src=\"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/DailyDeal-2-e1334202169354.jpg\" title=\"DailyDeal-2\" width=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\" style=\"font-size: 13px; text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.carnival.com\/cms\/fun\/ships\/carnival_valor\/default.aspx?shipCode=VA\">Carnival Valor<\/a><br \/>\n\t<span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">7 nights<\/span><br \/>\n\t<span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">May 11, 2014<\/span><br \/>\n\t<a href=\"http:\/\/www.topuertorico.org\/city\/sanjuan.shtml\" style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">San Juan<\/a><span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">&nbsp;(return):&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/st-thomas.com\/\" style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">St. Thomas<\/a><span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">,&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.visitbarbados.org\/\" style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">Barbados<\/a><span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">,&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stlucianow.ca\/?src=orgRedirection\" style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">St. Lucia<\/a><span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">,&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stkittstourism.kn\/\" style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">St. Kitts<\/a><span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">,&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.st-maarten.com\/\" style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">St. Maarten<\/a><br \/>\n\t<span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">Inside: $449<\/span><br \/>\n\t<strong style=\"color: rgb(255, 0, 0); line-height: 1.6em;\">Cost per day: $65<\/strong><br \/>\n\t<a href=\"http:\/\/www.carnival.com\" style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">www.carnival.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; The current four-letter word for cruise-ship passengers in Texas is F-O-G. Ordinarily, it&#39;s a three-letter word that nobody on a cruise ship cares much about&hellip; Until your ship can&#39;t leave and consequently that Caribbean port you badly wanted to visit is now off the itinerary. Until your ship can&#39;t return when it&#39;s scheduled to&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/?p=20017\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Cruise Lines, Passengers In A Fog In Texas<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":20042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,32,31,36,15],"tags":[137,154,493,912,72,86,35,544,385,575,126,1060,957,187],"class_list":["post-20017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cruise-industry-news","category-deals","category-ports","category-reviews","category-stories","tag-caribbean-cruises","tag-carnival","tag-carnival-valor","tag-cruise-bargains","tag-cruise-deals","tag-cruise-ships","tag-cruises","tag-fog","tag-galveston","tag-houston","tag-norwegian","tag-port-of-galveston","tag-princess-cruises","tag-weather","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}