Cruise Views : San Pedro Is the Port of Entry Into a World Where the Biggest Worry Is Deciding Which Way to Relax

They arrive in San Pedro by the hundreds of thousands every year--boiling out of limos, streaming off buses, hopping out of friends’ minivans.

They are newlyweds and divorcees and singles and couples married for 50 years. They are secretaries and bosses, blue collars and white collars. They come from countless cities and suburbs and small towns. Some have scrimped and saved for months to pay for this; others will put it on plastic and then scrimp and save for months to pay it back; some fortunate others don’t worry about the cost.

But all of them share one noticeable characteristic as they walk toward the portals of Los Angeles Harbor Berths 91 and 92--they are smiling, because they are taking a cruise.

For the next three or seven or 14 days they’ll be aboard the Jubilee or the Southward or some other floating luxury hotel, wining, dining, relaxing, maybe gambling. They’ll be an ocean away--a piece of an ocean away, at least--from their workaday cares.

No more office, traffic, hassles. Maybe even no more kids.

Every year about 325,000 people board cruise ships at the World Cruise Center in San Pedro, making Los Angeles the biggest cruise embarkation point on the West Coast, followed by Vancouver, British Columbia and San Diego, according to Karen Tozer, manager of general cargo and cruise services for the Port of L.A. Cruise ships account for about 10% of all vessel calls at the port, Tozer said, and port passenger fees--a tax set at $8.50 per passenger for every embarkation and debarkation, collected by the cruise lines and paid to the port--amount to $5 million per year.

That may seem like a lot of money to pay to the government just to walk on a ship, but nobody seems to complain.

“I made him take this cruise,” Barbara Nanney said recently as she and her husband, Donald, daughter Samantha and her friend Elizabeth Barnes unloaded luggage from a minivan in front of the terminal. “He’s been shut up in his office for three months--we literally haven’t seen him for three months!--and I told him when he was finished we were going to take a cruise. And here we are.”

“I just finished writing a book,” Donald, a Los Angeles attorney, explained. Actually, it was a revised second edition of a previously published book, called “Environmental Risks in Real Estate Transactions.”

But that was yesterday, when Donald Nanney was a lawyer in a suit and tie. On this day he’s a cruiser in a short-sleeved shirt. Most of the real estate he’ll be seeing for the next seven days will have a couple thousand feet of water on it. The only environmental risk he has to worry about is a sunburn. The only book he need concern himself with will be a trash novel.

For some people, the partying starts even before they can see the water.

A white stretch limo rolled up the curb outside the terminal. Heads turned.

It was Marian Sutherlin and Dalene Shacklett and Mary Chavez and Ken and Wanda Armstrong, all of them from the Upland-Ontario area. They were heading out for a three-day jaunt to Catalina and Ensenada aboard the Viking Serenade, and they decided to arrive in style--in a limo. So if the definition of celebrity is the ability to turn heads in a crowd, then Marian and Dalene and Mary and Ken and Wanda were celebrities, at least for as long as it took the limo driver to unload their baggage from the trunk.

“We just decided that this was the way to arrive for a cruise,” Marian said. They could have taken a bus from Ontario, or a shuttle, and saved a few bucks, she acknowledged.

“But on a bus you don’t get to fight over the free cashews,” she said.

Not all people are so free with their money. Even though it was cruise day, there were sensible types in evidence.

For example, Aaron and Laurie DeMent of Fountain Valley, who had been married exactly one day when they arrived for a seven-day cruise on the Jubilee. They were frugally carrying their own luggage, thus saving a tip to the baggage porter. Burdened as they were, however, they were smiling as they trudged toward the terminal.

“We wanted something where we could just relax and not have to worry about work or anything,” Aaron said.