Sisters bond despite ship mishap

Published 11:18 pm Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Way back when, The Four Preps had a big hit singing “Twenty-six miles across the sea, Santa Catalina is a-waitin’ for me.”

For a trio of sisters, the island southwest of Los Angeles is still a-waitin.’ During their cruise gone wrong, Catalina might as well have been 1,000 miles away. They never made it.

“It was crazy,” said Wendy Bell, 52, of Everett, who for months looked forward to a Royal Caribbean cruise from Los Angeles to Mexico with her sisters, Lynn Grow and Joan Harris-Thompson. Grow, 49, lives in Charles Town, W.Va., and 51-year-old Harris-Thompson lives in Salt Lake City.

They were scheduled to cruise July 7-11, but ended up mostly on dry land, at a San Diego hotel, shopping and going to movies. “We made lemonade out of lemons,” Bell said.

In short, they missed the boat, but it’s not a tale so quickly told. By getting off the ship in San Diego and failing to get back on, they ran afoul of federal law. Known as the Jones Act, Section 27 of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 was intended to promote a U.S.-flag fleet. More about that later.

On July 7, just as planned, they boarded the Monarch of the Seas at Pier 93 in San Pedro, Calif., near Los Angeles. The itinerary called for stops in San Diego, on Catalina Island, and at Ensenada, Mexico, with a return to L.A.

They settled into their small stateroom, toured the boat, had dinner and went to bed. In San Diego the next morning, they skipped the organized shore excursion. Instead, they rented a car and drove 40 minutes to Oceanside, where their grandmother once lived. They also trusted a car rental clerk — who told them it would take two hours or less to drive back to the ship.

“It took three hours in California traffic. We made frantic calls to the cruise line, that we were stuck in traffic,” Bell said. “Oh my word, we were ill,” said Thompson-Harris. “Lynn was driving. We aren’t used to ordinary L.A. traffic.”

Having missed the ship’s departure for Santa Catalina, it made perfect sense to catch up with their cruise on the nearby island. Taking an excursion boat to Catalina costs under $100. That pesky federal law wouldn’t allow it.

Michael Sheehan, a spokesman for Miami-based Royal Caribbean International, said Tuesday that the Jones Act bars foreign-registered ships from transporting people from one U.S. port to another. The old law, he said, was intended to boost American shipping interests. Royal Caribbean ships fly the flag of the Bahamas.

The cruise line, Sheehan said, is fined by the U.S. government for any violations of the Jones Act. In traveling from San Pedro to San Diego and getting off and not back on, the sisters already incurred one violation, for which Royal Caribbean charged them $300 each.

Getting on the ship at Santa Catalina would have been more complicated, said Sheehan, because it’s not a port recognized by the U.S. government. “That would have been violation No. 2,” he said. The cruise line, he said, will work with the government to try to have the fine waived. “If, in fact, the fine is waived, the ladies can get a refund,” he said.

If the women had somehow made it to Ensenada, Mexico, they would have been allowed onboard, Sheehan added.

Not only were they out cruise costs — which range from about $300 to about $600 for their trip — and each was charged $300 for Jones Act violations, they also lost $92 each for shore excursions they booked but didn’t take.

“Everything fell apart,” said Harris-Thompson. “We ended up sleeping in, going out to eat and going to the movies.”

They saw “WALL-E,” “Kung Fu Panda” and “Hancock.” Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, they visited the temple in San Diego. They also shopped for clothes. All their luggage was aboard ship. After frantic calls, only medications and a few other items had been left for them at the port in San Diego.

It was to have been a restful time after a terrible year. In 2007, the women’s mother died, and Bell also lost her husband, Randy, to cancer. Harris-Thompson said she’ll cruise again, but the women vow never again to travel on Royal Caribbean.

“It’s so fun to get on the boat and wake up the next morning in a new place. Cruising had always been a worry-free mode of travel — until this time,” said Harris-Thompson, the only one of them who had cruised before.

With two options — laugh or cry — they made the better choice.

“With something so horribly funny, you’ve just got to laugh,” Grow said. “If we hadn’t lost a fortune, it would have been a very fun vacation,” Harris-Thompson added.

“This was a nonstop laughing trip,” Bell said. “We probably had more fun than we would have on the boat.”

Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.