Cruising Geocachers?

[+JessiShaffer]

My husband and I are currently planning a cruise and plan to use one of our ports (Nassau, Bahamas) as a caching opportunity. Are there any other cruisers in the crowd? Any tips for planning our geotour or meeting up with other cachers shipboard or abroad?

[+jellis]

I would suggest creating an event at the hotel you be staying at. Most cachers who are going to locations like that will do a PQ and it will show up. I have a friend who went on a cruise and put an event on every port they stopped at.

[+JessiShaffer]

Yeah, there would be no actual hotel as we're only there for a few daylight hours. We've been warned to return to the ship before dark and plan on doing that. What is the etiquette of creating an event cache for it? Should we delete when we return?

[+colleda]

We cruise and geocache. In April we cruised the Panama Canal E to W (Ft Lauderdale/San Diego) on Celebrity Infinity. We take a netbook computer with us on which we have GSAK downloaded with all the caches in Mexico and each of the countries we visited. All the caches were loaded on our Garmin Etrex 20s before we left. The netbook was a back up for the Etrexes and for logging in port, usually at wifi cafes or hotels. Ship internet is too slow and expensive. (Pre cruise we spent 2 weeks in Mexico).

We've done the same cruising to New Zealand, Singapore and canal cruising in UK.

As we don't use phones for caching the above works well for us. We've planned another cruise in August and hope to pick up caches in Canada and Alaska.

We have noticed a few port events done by cruising cachers. Our experience is we have been the only cachers on board each of 6 ships we've cruised on since we started. We once ran into one cacher from another ship that was in port at the same time. Doing non ship private excursions can give greater flexiblilty, for grabbing smilies, as operators are often willing to accommodate special interests.

[+colleda]

There is an event for June in Nassau, you could use it as a template if you want to organise your own.

 

GC5VBZ4

 

Another Nassau event event 30/5 had three attendees.

 

GC5RY3C

[+jellis]

I see two of them you can use. Just use that location and pick a large window of time and let them know you will be there when the ship arrives. I was surprised that one is from a cacher friend. I stayed almost a week on that island years ago. At that time I found them all, and see there are some new ones.

[knowschad]

Hahaha! I thought the subject was "Cursing Geocachers". Thought I had something to add to the thread, but I guess not.

[+NeverSummer]

Hahaha! I thought the subject was "Cursing Geocachers". Thought I had something to add to the thread, but I guess not.

Ha! Like the naked geocaching topic...

 

Anyway...

Contact user NorthWes. He's done a couple cruises and can connect you to people down there.

[+Gill & Tony]

Since I started caching I've done cruises to New Zealand, Alaska and the South Pacific Islands.

 

I have always found time to do day trips from the ship when in port and pick up some caches as well. There is usually time after a day trip to remain on shore to walk around the town. Often the day trip itself has stop-overs when you can grab a cache.

 

One of my favourite memories was persuading a coach driver to stop at "the smallest desert in the world" earthcache at Carcross long enough for me to grab the data and take a photo. The tour guide enjoyed it so much that she has added it to her regular stops. We got the Emerald Lake earthcache a few minutes later.

 

I did a lot of planning with GSAK for each cruise, and always managed at least one in each port.

[+colleda]

Hahaha! I thought the subject was "Cursing Geocachers". Thought I had something to add to the thread, but I guess not.

 

Dadgum it!

[RuideAlmeida]

Recently I had the 2nd visit here in the Amazon, of a couple of geocachers that work on cruises; Salts&Marbles, from Vermont.

Maybe you can send them a message, asking for hints.

[+J Grouchy]

Hahaha! I thought the subject was "Cursing Geocachers". Thought I had something to add to the thread, but I guess not.

 

It's better than the first thing I thought of when I saw "Cruising Geocachers"...

[+QuiltinNana]

We did a cruise last June from Seattle to Alaska and Canada. I did searches of each port and found caches that I thought I might want to visit. Then I created a bookmark list and downloaded that to my GPS before we left. Not knowing how much time we would have in each port and actual distances involved, I overdid the number of caches I wanted to get to in each port. We rented a car in Skagway and drove up to Emerald Lake caching the way up and back ending up at a gold rush cemetery.

The winter before, we went to the Bahamas, staying on Paradise Island just across the bridge from Nassau. One day we spent the day in Nassau, so we had already preloaded caches and there are 5 or 6 (at least then) that were all in walking distance of the piers where the big boats dock. The Queen's Staircase was a good one.

[+GrateBear]

Try checking out the "roll call" section of Cruise Critic: http://boards.cruisecritic.com You can look up the ship you're sailing on, the cruise you are taking, and ask if any other cachers will be aboard. It's a pretty friendly web site for the most part. Lots of helpful advice.

Edited June 15, 2015 by GrateBear

[+Dread_Pirate_Bruce]

My wife and I do a lot of cruises.

 

I preload my GPS with likely prospects for each port. Likely prospects means caches near the cruise ship terminal that I can walk to, caches whose logs refer to cachers being on a cruise, and caches at places a tour is likely to go. I'm on a cruise, not a cache outing, so my goal is one or two caches per port.

 

On a recent cruise, I hosted an event in several ports where there were no physical or virtual caches.. Each was near the ship scheduled for 30 minutes and starting either 30 or 60 minutes before departure. (It is too hard to figure when you can get off the ship so don't schedule an event for your arrival - missing your own event is bad form.) The only attendees were from my ship. I suppose that was to be expected because if there were local cachers, there would have been more physical caches nearby.