Swissfred

This link shows a photo of the Amerikanis in October 1984. My future wife and I were on RCCL's Song of America during hurricane Josephine. Although we were told it was a tropical storm during the cruise, the damage to the interior of our ship, the close proximity to the Amerikanis, and the IMAX film about the space shuttle that showed this hurricane, says otherwise! As 21 year-olds, we had the time of ourlives! http://community.webshots.com/user/swissfred100

Yes, dates from my previous message do not match. Our wedding year is 1986, not 1989. My daughter was born in 1989, thus the mistake. Dee Dee, if you read this, please forgive me!

In June of 1984, my two roomates and I (all 21 year old single men) sailed on NCL's M/S Skyward...the first cruise for all of us. About midnight, trying to cool off after dancing for a couple of hours, we went outside and sat down at a table in the ocean breeze. One of my roomates stayed at the disco. We were the only ones out there until "they" arrived! Two ladies in their seventies sat at the table with us and gave us a stern warning about the ship's staff. "Our room steward is sabotaging us", they said. "I think they want to kill us!". They continued to warn us to be careful. Finally, we asked what the staff was doing. The ladies replied, "they steal our toilet paper everyday!" It took 20 minutes to get rid of them.

This was not the scariest moment of that evening!

After the ladies left, two crew members walked by and talked to us for a couple of minutes. They saw the Heineken beer we were drinking and asked if we paid full price at the bar. Of course we did. "If you want drinks for $1.00, come downstairs to the crew's bar". Beer for a buck? We were there! We sat down at the full service bar and ordered our drinks. Sitting at the bar, with typical mirrors behind the the bar, we noticed two guys leave their table and prance up to the bar. Mind you, my roomate and I never said a word, but we both saw what was happening. These guys stood behind us with about a sixteenth of an inch of space between us! My roomate and I looked at each other, stood up, casually walked to the staircase, and ran up those stairs like we were professional athletes!

Fast-forward to 2005... this roomate and I were both "Best Men" at each other's weddings in 1989, have both been on many cruises (but not together since our original cruise), and are planning a large group cruise in 2006 for our 20 year anniversary...no kids.