December 18, 2008 – Ft Lauderdale and Home

Captain John had hoped to pick up a pilot early but Ft Lauderdale doesn’t work that way. We waited off shore almost until sunrise and then began our slow sail into Port Everglades and docked shortly after 7:00. On the other side of the dock was the RSSC Voyager, fresh from drydock and ready to sail through the Panama Canal to Los Angeles where she’ll begin her World Cruise in a couple of weeks. We waited for Customs & Immigration to come on board, and waited, and waited and finally they arrived. Those of us who were over our exemption amount waited in line to declare our purchases and the customs officers were quite inconsistent in applying duty or exempting it for Brazilian jewelry. Fortunately our tab came to only $23.00. We then waited a lot longer for all the luggage to get offloaded and were finally able to debark around 10:15. Full cruisers were given private car or van transfers to the airport and we went with Wolf & Cheryl and all of our luggage to Hertz in the airport to rent a van. Wolf & Cheryl are long time cruise friends from California who were leaving for a holiday cruise 2 days later so we invited them to stay with us in Naples for that time. We arrived in Naples 1 ½ hour later, stopped for lunch and got home to relax and unwind from a wonderful cruise.

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