R. Doug Wicker — Author

The Sapphire Princess passed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge around noon on Sunday, October 7 — some twenty or so hours after departing the trip’s embarkation port of Los Angeles.  We were scheduled to dock in San Francisco at around 1:00 P.M. for a 24-hour stay.  Alas, this was Fleet Week in San Francisco, and Homeland Security had other ideas.  Despite the plans of 2,600 passengers, Homeland Security decided that allowing the Sapphire Princess to dock at the scheduled time was too much of a security risk.  There will be a mini-rant on this subject below, following the photo show, but for now we’ll concentrate of the beauty of San Francisco from the water:

Golden Gate Beneath the Clouds

Towering into the Clouds

The Marin County/Sausalito Side of the Bay

Our “Protectors” (or was it Warders?)

Our Tug Approaches

Getting Closer

Nestling Along Side

A Familiar Skyline

Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid Dominate

Coit Tower

Setting Sun

Now, time for that promised mini-rant:

Risk to whom, Homeland Security?  Per U.S. regulations, passengers and their luggage are screened before boarding a cruise ship.  And if it’s the cruise ship and her passengers who are at risk, what was the danger?  If there were security concerns for the passengers, why wasn’t Fleet Week cancelled for the safety of the hundreds of thousands “at risk” ashore?  The obvious answer here, as has so often been the case since the 9/11 attacks, is that some overzealous bureaucrat out to make a name for him or herself arbitrarily decided to inconvenience 2,600 people who had dinner reservations, were meeting with loved ones who had driven in some cases hours, had prepaid tours scheduled, etc.  I’m sorry for the rant, but this kind of silliness has gotten so out of hand that it really needs to be addressed, and the person responsible for making 3,700 passengers and crew bob around the bay for five hours needs to be reassigned to a position in which they cannot continue to inconvenience people on a personal whim