The Booze Cruise

       It was a sunny and warm Sunday, during late February in Florida. The temperatures were soaring into the mid-eighties, something unusual even for sunny Florida. We were inbound for the Port of Miami. The cruise ships terminals here regularly launch and recover tens of thousands of sun-seeking tourists every week during the Winter Season. It is a welcome respite for those hardy individuals, from the Northern climes, who are seeking some warmth and heat to relieve the winter chill.

         As usual, on embarkation day, the area surrounding the embarkation gangways are a portrait in controlled chaos. We managed well enough. We had and left our car in the nearby parking garage. The charge was $22 a day, but the convenience of leaving your car nearby is worth the price.

        We boarded the 15-deck Royal Caribbean’s Navigator of the Seas, without effort. We settled in to our eighth-floor balcony room. Then, we set about exploring the busy hive of a cruise ship, as she loads her passengers and makes ready for sea. And although the activity was frenetic, it was controlled and leading to a smooth departure that evening at 5 P.M. We were headed for the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and the ports of Costa Maya and the Island of Cozumel.

        As we strolled the decks, admiring the Miami skyline and the pricey homes and condos around the port area, we began to notice the rather ubiquitous presence of beverage containers in the hands of virtually everyone. Now, I come from the hard-drinking, blue collar environs of South Buffalo, New York. The habit of pounding (drinking 16 ounce Genesee beers) is not an uncommon practice. It was just that even in South Buffalo, we never got started at noon and continued on for the rest of the day, as these adventurous souls apparently planned to do. A liver can only handle so much abuse in a given period.

      We were witnessing one of the news profit centers ship-board. Ranging from $100 a day, per cabin for RC ships, to up to $150 a day in the Princess lines, is the new feature of “drink packages.” If you sign up for one of these programs, as apparently many do, you are entitled to consume up to fifteen beers a day. I had heard of this feature from friends, but had never thought that it was this wide-spread a practice. And these weren’t all goofy college kids on a lark either. We were to witness a goodly number of senior citizen, walking the decks and even appearing at dinner, beverage mug or bottle in hand.

     Even for someone conditioned as I was to witnessing heavy pounding, I was somewhat taken aback. How the heck could you keep your legs about you, maybe even in a rough sea, after you had drunk a veritable ocean of beer or spirits? And for that matter, who would even want to try, unless you were a life-long imbiber of renowned capacity, who drank like this daily anyways.

      In the ensuing days, we were to see the toll that it took. Teens lying asleep in the sun, after overconsuming, became the norm. Cheerful folks, with half a package on at any time of the day, became routine. I wonder if the company’s bean counters had even given a thought to the social toll this kind of drinking took on the imbibers. I know heroin and opiate dispensers had a similar mentality. Once the y sold you the product, the rest was on your head.

      In fairness, we didn’t really witness any extremely awful behavior during the cruise. Everyone was probably so fried, from swilling an ocean of beer, that they settled onto a deck chairs and couldn’t get up until nature’s course forced then to make a speed run for the facilities.

       I guess they all had a pretty good time. The raucous cheers poolside seemed to indicate that the passenger complement was of good cheer all day. They were bouncing back and forth from brain numbing reggae music to “belly flop“ events, topside. For most of the cruise we sought the quieter environs of lower deck lounges and libraries. Thankfully, we didn’t see too many beverage containers in these more sober precincts.

      And lest I be thought abstemious and judgmental, we did drink some really decent California Cabernet with dinner and even managed a glass of the same, at a deck-fourteen lounge while watching the sunset. People get to choose for themselves, I guess. Still, drinking fifteen beers a day? Who still drinks like that and survives?

                                                  -30-

                                          (769 words)

                                        Joseph Xavier Martin