Port 42 Stirrup Cay, Bahamas

by Ed · March 30, 2022

On Mar 24th, 2022, just before 6 AM we pulled up to Stirrup Cay and dropped anchor. We listened to the engine backing and felt the anchor chain rattling down the hawse hole before we laid back down to sleep a little more. Nothing worth photographing.

It was interesting to recall that Royal Caribbean’s Coco Cay is right next door. Usually we would be on a Royal Caribbean ship looking at an NCL ship at Stirrup Cay. Two RCI ships are at Coco Cay today – the 4,000 passenger Mariner of the Seas, and the almost 7,000 passenger Wonder of the Seas! I can’t imagine 11,000 passengers streaming onto that island, or even at half capacity, 5,500 passengers! At least RCI now has a dock for the two ships – we used to tender to the island. We have a whopping 300 passengers, and we’re tendering to Stirrup Cay. Both of these islands are becoming theme parks with ziplines and water slides.

You can see how close the two cays are to each other!

The prominent feature or Stirrup Cay is the lighthouse. This is clearly more for ziplining than for maritime navigation!

The local tenders have to be used here. Similar story from the early Royal Caribbean days!

Joy had an excursion to “swim with the pigs,’ but I didn’t feel the need to do anything like that today. I stayed on board.

But off Joy went! Apparently wild pigs here are very social, and have learned when cruise ships come in the passengers have apples to feed them. Hmmm, this didn’t happen by accident… But it is a unique activity!

I love this picture of the pig climbing on Lisa’s back to get the apple!

Then it was Joy’s turn! She tried to give the piggy a kiss, but the pig was too interested in the apple!

Piggy says, “Mission accomplished! I got the apple! Yum yum yumyumyumyum.”

It was time to swim! But the little piggies were too tired to swim. What we didn’t know until it was too late is Royal Caribbean had two large groups of people show up before this tour, and Joy was on the second Oceania tour, so the pigs were full and not motivated to swim!

The hogs were willing to swim, but this was supposed to be a “swim with the pigs!” The handlers told the group that the little pigs didn’t like the water when it was rough. Hmmm, looks pretty tame to me!

Joy decided to hold the piggy instead of swim with the hoggy.

Meanwhile, back on the ship, at 11:00 AM, while I was working on these blogs and Joy was playing with the piggies, the Captain came on the public address system and announced due to increasing swells the last tender from ship to shore will be at 12 noon. But per plans the last tender from shore to ship will still be at the designated 2:30 PM time.

So I didn’t go stretch my legs on shore today.

Instead I looked to see what I could see from the ship! And here’s what I saw!

The island had beaches! OMG it has a lot of beach space! Starting here…

…then to here…

…and up to the lighthouse…

…then past the lighthouse…

…and another past the lighthouse…

…then another…

…and another…

…and yet another…

..and finally one more! They can fit thousands onto this beach! Again, we have just over 300!

We heard later that Royal Caribbean did have some of their people on the Stirrup Cay beaches! Oh my! Let them use their own private island!

I nominate the Royal Caribbean Wonder of the Seas to be the second ugliest cruise ship I’ve seen on this trip, just behind the Virgin ship we saw in Miami (was that the Scarlet Lady? not sure). The bubble dome over what I guess is the solarium area looks like an infection and not seaworthy. Whoever sold them on this design also designed the king’s new clothes. I love you RCI, but you sorely missed on this one!