Day at Sea to Cozumel

As you may know I took a cruise the week of January 20th to the 27th and for the next few weeks I will go over some of the weather and activities we did on that trip. We left Florida on a sunny mild day of the 20th As we headed out to sea the weeks weather forecast did not look all that great as it was forecasted to have rain almost ever day.
The first day at sea on the way to Cozumel fell was just as the forecast cloudy with off and on rain showers. We did get to get some mini golf in and of course it was mild and no wind to speak of. The lack of wind made for a very smooth ride and you could not even guess you were on a ship. My wife like to play the slots and she did that for a while as I do not like the casino I don’t enjoy dropping money that way and I can not stand the smokers in there. Cruise ships are mostly smoke free except in the casino and parts of the outside on one of the decks. Ever night on the cruise trip we ate dinner in the main dinning room (think a nice set down dinner ever night) we had a nice couple from South Carolina as table mates. While this was our 9th cruise it was their 21st So while we are “gold” members they are “platinum” members.

On Monday we docked at Cozumel Mexico this is the largest island on the Mexico east coast. The forecast was for thunderstorms but while there were some broken clouds and storms to the west on the island it was mostly sunny and warm probably in the low 80’s We did a submarine trip and that was a blast. I had never been down in a submarine before and I found out that less than 1% of the worlds population had been down it one. They took us down to 125 feet but the best part was down around 15 to 30 feet and all of the fish and coral that could be seen. I really enjoyed that trip. After we went to the Mayan Cacao factory and sampled several kinds of Chocolate. While way over priced my wife bough several bars of their Chocolate. After the candy store we went to a Tequila factory and got to sample many types of Tequila (did not know there were that many flavors) must say did get a good buzz on there. And there we bought a bottle of Pina Colada Tequila once again very pricy but boy its good.

We are now less then two week away from the meteorological start of spring. Now while we can still get winter like weather all the way into April but for the most part the worst of winter 2017/18 should be behind us. The biggest snow storms here in Grand Rapids for the last 10 days of February are 1. 9.0” on the 28th in 1900 2. 8.1” on the 25th in 1935. 3. 7.3” on the 24th in 2016. Remember for the most part lake effect snow is now pasted so most of the snow we get now is wetter and heaver so harder to shovel and drive on. The average high/low starts out at 34/20 today and by the 28th it is 38/22. The coldest it has been the last two weeks of February is -19° on February 17 1977 and the warmest is 67° on February 22nd 1930 and again on February 27 1976.

Here is the latest CPC’s idea of what March could be like

http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/predictions/30day/

Slim