A coastal Mississippi construction contractor making his first long trip since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast was among 2,200 people boarding the first cruise ship to return to the city on a regular schedule.

Cheryl Garber / Associated Press

The Norwegian Sun cruise ship enters the Port of New Orleans before dawn as the first cruise ship to homeport in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, Sun., Oct. 15, 2006.

"I really needed the getaway," said Christian Baehr, who is repairing his house in Long Beach, Miss., between jobs. He wasn't going alone in a crowd -- about 50 friends and relations were in a group boarding the Norwegian Sun.

"We booked this in February so we could get all of us on together," said Baehr, wearing bluejean shorts, a Hawaiian shirt printed with cockatoos and a big grin. "And we're all on the eighth floor! I would say about 95 percent of us have balconies along the same side."

Hurricane Katrina, which slammed coastal Louisiana and Mississippi on Aug. 29, hit hard at what had been a burgeoning business. A smaller sister ship to the Sun, Norwegian Dream, was among four home-ported in the city. More than 700,000 passengers left and arrived through the Port of New Orleans in 2004.

Katrina shut down the usually strong fall season. Only 308,000 passengers sailed from New Orleans during the first eight months this year, according to the International Council of Cruise Lines, an industry group. The truncated year supported nearly 5,000 jobs in Louisiana as the industry spent $241 million, a figure that was still higher than the $208 million spent for all of 2004, according to ICCL.

Baehr said that since the storm, he has taken shorter trips -- one to Birmingham, Ala., and one to Pensacola, Fla. -- with smaller groups of friends. "But you can't have a real getaway until you get on a ship for a week with no communications," he said.

It was the third cruise he and his friends have taken. The other two both were on Carnival Cruise Lines; storm damage canceled what had been planned as their third.

The Carnival Sensation, which left just before the hurricane, was the last regular voyage. The Norwegian Sun is the first of four ships returning later this year and in 2007. When Carnival Cruise Lines brings a second ship -- announced two weeks before the hurricane's anniversary -- in fall 2007, it will bring the cruise totals back to what they were before the storm.

Gary LaGrange, president and chief executive officer of the Port of New Orleans, also made an early reservation on the Norwegian Sun. As soon as the line announced its return, he said, "I decided I was going to be on it. I'm taking my first vacation" since Hurricane Katrina.

He was wore a suit and carried a briefcase, but said the trip would be at least as much play as work. "I brought books to read" -- all about baseball, he said. He'd been waiting for time to read one of them for a year, he said.

While he was talking, Wendy Swerman, a local business development manager for the cruise line headquartered in Miami and owned by Genting Group of Malaysia, came up. "This facility is amazing. Just amazing," she said.

"Just wait until we finish painting it," LaGrange said.

Construction on the Erato Street Wharf, which can handle two cruise ships at a time, was going on when the storm hit, and couldn't resume again until December, port spokesman Chris Bonura said.

Leif Berntsson of Copenhagen and five friends from Malmo, Sweden, were among the 1,800 passengers leaving the ship at New Orleans after a 17-day trip. They had only a one-day stopover, and planned to make the most of it in the French Quarter.

"We don't know how much is left of the rest of New Orleans," Berntsson said.

Actually, the biggest tourist areas -- the Garden District mansions, the French Quarter, the zoo -- escaped fairly lightly. They were the areas settled first, because they didn't need to be drained.

Berntsson was glad to hear that.

For 145 British tourists, there wasn't even that much time. They had to board buses for an immediate haul to the airport, though some of them had time for a tour on the way. All the bus trips had been planned with tours, but it took longer than expected to get the luggage out of the ship, said guide Servando Mendez. He said the bus he was on had to head directly for the airport while he told passengers about New Orleans' culture and history, early and recent.

He said he has done about 10 unpaid tours for Loyola University, to show students damage from the storm, but this was only his fourth or fifth paid tour since Katrina.

(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)