Day 10 - Monday - 3/24/25 - Half Moon Cay

 It was nice to sleep in as we did not have a projected arrival until 10:30 in the morning. Despite doing 23 kn on the sale from Fort Lauderdale the ride was very smooth.While eating breakfast, we arrived at the Cay. Since we have priority tender boarding, we took our time to gather our things, and then made our way down to deck one and joined the line to board a tender. At this private island they use larger tenders that are based at the island. They seat around 500 passengers. We tendered to shore and then made our way to the pavilion area where the barbecue was to be served. We had decided that we would eat first and then go snorkeling. It was about 40 minute wait for the barbecue to start and we found a table under a shaded cover to wait.

The barbecue was the same as we've experienced previously and it was quite good. They served a number of different kinds of salads along with your choice of cooked fish, chicken or beef & rice, and there are fruit choices as well. Fruit drinks are also available along with ice cream. For those who like alcoholic beverages those can be purchased as well. All of the food is prepared and delivered from the ship. They do the barbecue cooking of the meats on the island.

Afterwards, we made our way down to the beach and found a couple lawn chairs to put our stuff on. I changed into my snorkeling gear and headed out into the water which is quite clear but a little on the chillier side than what we experienced last week. I initially found lots of schools of fish , including Sergeant Majors. My camera battery was going dead, so I returned to shore to change the battery out, and a fellow came up to me and noted that there's an octopus to be found underneath the cabana by the waterslide. So I went back out and found that it was pretty cool to see an octopus in a concrete block under the water. It's the first octopus I've seen in the wild while snorkeling. We snorkeled about an hour hour and a half or so, and then gathered our things up and walked the length of the beach down past where the horses enter the beach from the stable area. We didn't go quite as far as we've done in previous trips where we would snorkel, but it was a nice walk in the sand, and we got our steps in for the day. It was interesting to note the new construction of the new dock and amusement area for Carnival Corporation.Ships using that facility will not have to tender.

We walked back down the beach to the central area and did some shopping before waiting for a tender back to the ship. Our tender went back around 4 PM with the last tender being 5:30 PM. Once on board, I made reservations for dinner in the Canaletto for 5 PM. I tried to on previous days to make reservations, but was unable using both the phone app and the television. When we showed up for our appointment, I noted that to the greeter and he didn't really have an answer. Our meal in the Canaletto was very nice.

The evening entertainment was the Step One Dance Company performing a set called Move. I wasn't impressed with it. It had no theme and music and dancing didn't seem cohesive to me as a spectator. Unfortunately, there are two more performances by the Step One Dance Company as the evening entertainment on future nights Following this we listened to rock 'n music outside the Rolling Stone lounge before going to the Billboard Onboard dual pianos and listened to the one hit wonders playlist. Surprisingly, there were a number of songs that we had not previously heard on this set list and performed by other pianists.

Our clocks were set back an hour tonight so we gained an extra hour of sleep. Tomorrow is a sea day and a chance to relax before doing three straight port days.