Porthole Magazine
July 1, 2001
Royal Clipper Lures a First-Timer

Experienced cruisers all know that something special takes hold on a cruise, that a real connection develops between you and the other passengers and crew, and that you find yourself with the kind of proprietary feeling you never have about a hotel: this is my ship.

Since my friend Dolan had never taken a cruise before, she didn’t have a clue what it was all about. So when I invited her on one, she was willing to give it a try in the spirit of spending time with a friend and a week in the Caribbean. How bad could a cruise be?
Well, obviously not very. The cruise has come and gone and Dolan is still smiling, and her husband’s been a little suspicious ever since.

To be fair, this wasn’t any typical big-ship Vegas-style cruise. Our journey began in Barbados, where the new 228-passenger Royal Clipper, a five-masted, fully-rigged tall ship inspired by the great German clipper Preussen of 1902, is based for its week-long Caibbean jaunts, hitting a great string of the more off-beat, less touristy islands like Antigua, St. Lucia, Les Saintes, Dominica, and St. Kitts. It’s a casual ship with a seriously adventurous attitude, and the most plush yet still swashbuckling ship you can find today.
And it didn’t take my protégé Dolan long to fall for it.


Cruise Realization No. 1: “I love these people.”

These passengers and crew weren’t your garden-variety Joes next door. Dolan loved the people on the ship, an international stew of mostly Europeans and North Americans, and it didn’t hurt that they loved her too. The charming 30-year-old cruise director, Demitri, a former circus performer from Russia, took an immediate shine to her. Pronouning her name Dolannaaaaa with a great theatrical flair and plying her with endless compliments seemed to be his newest pastime. And, the Peruvian bartender, Herman, seemed to think she was the cutest thing since sliced bread and never made her pay for a thing. Suddenly, my quiet chemist friend was a movie star and she didn’t seem to mind it one bit.
Young hunks aside, we made lots of new friends from all walks of life. We hiked up to Fort Napoleon on Les Saintes with an endearing Chicago couple, a wise-cracking salesman and his doting young wife, and shared a meal with a a charming, French Ben Kingsley lookalike and his glamorous wife, who were Star Clippers fans and sailed with the line many times before. We raised our glasses with a group of fun-loving Austrians at the bar and gossiped with a young couple from New Jersey on their honeymoon. As with all small ships, the atmosphere on the Royal Clipper is intimate and socialable, and everyone gets chummy fast. That’s what makes a journey on this ship so wonderfully different than a 2,000-passenger mega, where you’re but a face in the crowd.


Cruise Realization No. 2: “Whoa, are these things comfy!”

Dolan didn’t expect the cabin, outrageously roomy for a tall ship at 148 square feet, to have great marble bathroom and such elegant finishings, from the navy-blue and gold fabrics to the dark wood paneling. It reminded her of a small country inn she once knew in the Cotswalds, and she was seriously thumbs-up about the all-day movies on the television and the pillow chocolates at night.

As the third new build for Star Clippers, which launched the 170-passenger Star Flyer in 1991 and sister-ship Star Clipper in 1992, Royal Clipper takes the line’s comfort standard up a few notches. With its three-deck atrium and its multi-level restaurant done up with plush red velvet chairs and banquettes, white-fluted columns, and frilly ironwork railings, you’d forget you were on a sailing ship if it weren’t for the very ship-like creaking and rolling. There’s no roughing it in the food department either, though don’t expect American staples like burgers and fries or anything too exotic, as the chef tries to please many different palates. With such a large European clientele, cuisine is continental and dominated by cheeses, marinated fish, potato salads and meats at the breakfast and lunch buffets, along with basics at dinner like Fussili in a tomato sauce, grilled Norwegian salmon, and a herb crusted rack of lamb, accompanied by a decent wine list.

The spacious piano bar, which wraps around the top level of the atrium, is equally as refined as the restaurant and filled with comfy upholstered and leather seating. There’s even a clubby library with a fireplace (faux, of course, this is a wooden ship!) and an underwater observation lounge, where you can spy flood-lit fish through the below-sea-level portholes, attached to the gym for views of sea life. Impressive for a ship of this size, the mini-gym is a respite for fitness freaks, though you may not want to risk heaving around the barbells or jogging on the treadmill when the ship is in motion.

Still, despite the cushy amenities, the dress codes are casual and the atmopshere is homey, though the night of the captain’s cocktail party many men wore jackets.


Cruise Realization No. 3: “Hey, that’s my baguette.”

The Royal Clipper’s ports of call aren’t tourist-clogged, Disneyified islands, but instead exotic little pockets of palm tree paradise where your ship is often the only one in sight and you can blend into the local culture in a way you never could if you arrived aboard a 2,000-passenger megaship.
Dolan the rookie cruiser was smitten. On French-flavored Les Saintes, a darling little speck of an island surrounded by candy-colored wooden fishing boats, we set off on foot down a gently rolling road through picture-postcard countryside and ended up on a slice of quiet beach at the other side of the island. A family of hungry goats was already there, and didn’t budge even after we climbed a tree to finish the baguette and cheese we had purchased from the cute old man selling them nearby. We spent the next hour quietly reading at the water’s edge on this idyllic beach loving life, and I couldn’t help but hear Dolan sigh like a woman in love. We were impressed with the rainforest tour in St. Kitts too. In the thick of it, our guide Addy had our small group of 10 pause for 5 minutes of complete silence to listen to the sounds of the pristine jungle and give nature some time to seep into our souls. We communed with nature as appreciatively as we did the homemade banana bread and passion fruit juice Addy served us after the tour. Dolan even asked for seconds.

Cruise Realization No. 4: “Wow, it’s adventurous like a real yacht!”

Dolan’s pre-cruise fears of seeing Kathy Lee stroll past in a sequin number crooning show tunes wore off quickly, and she was relieved to find out that the Royal Clipper didn’t have a gltizy casino clanging away the hours or Vegas-style shows to fill up the evenings. As we all did, she became quite entertained by the ship itself. We crawled into the bow net one day, just for the thrill of it, gingerly straddling the bowsprit boom before climbing into the spongy net and splaying out in the warm sun for a spell. Dolan and I decided to pass on climbing the masts (although many of our shipmates lined up for the chance), but she did help pull in the sails one afternoon while I snoozed by the pool. No one holds a gun to your head to lend a hand, but most passengers feel a mysterious compulsion to pitch in anyway.

For true sailors, wannabes, and newbes like Dolan, the web of ropes and cables stretched between Royal Clipper’s 42 sails, masts and deck--along with the winches, Titanic-style ventilators, brass bells, wooden barrels, and chunky anchor chains cluttering the deck--are constant reminders you’re on a real ship, one that’s a far, far different animal than today’s typical mass-market mega. Creaking and gently rolling and pitching like a true sailing ship, Royal Clipper can easily make 15 knots under sail alone, though most of the time the engines are used too (especially at night) since the ship has port-a-day schedule to maintain. The ship is perfect example of what one could call “rugged arm-chair adventure.”


Cruise Realization No. 5: “I can barely fit in a massage, but I’ll try real hard.”

Not only wasn’t Dolan bored, she never even got past the first chapter of the book she brought along. I learned years ago to not even bother. Since the Royal Clipper is in port every single day, there’s no pacing the decks on this ship. In port, we enjoyed complimentary water sports like kayaking, snorkeling and banana boat rides, while aboard ship there was an impressive little gym, morning exercise classes on deck, and masseuses below decks waiting to rub away our tensions. Ok, so they weren’t the most private massages --- a single massage room is divided into two treatment areas by a curtain --- but at just $62 for an hour-long Thai or sports massage, we glady left our American inhibitions behind and blocked out the muffled whispers and sounds of massage strokes on the other side.

Of course a favorite pastime of many passengers didn’t involve any activity in particular, but lounging by the three pools on the SunDeck, an unheard-of luxury on a ship the size of the Royal Clipper much less a tall ship (Blue Beard would be turning in his grave if he knew). Two are basically over-sized hot tubs, while the third, amidships, is on par with the average pool found on mega ships carrying eight times as many passengers. For those not akin to sunbathing, many enjoyed sitting on one of the benches surrounding the open bridge, watching the captain and mates navigate, and the sailors climbing the masts and pulling in the sails. Unlike the others which are controlled by hydraulic winches, the sails on the lowest boom on the forward mast must be manually unfurled (an intentional feature added by company owner Mikael Krafft merely for the delight of old salts who crave as real a sailing experience as possible). It’s a sight for passengers to watch a clutch of sailors shimmy across the huge boom, like the Liputians on Gulliver, to unleash the massive Dacron sails.

Cruise Realization No. 6: “Who knew a corny talent show could be so much fun?”

Dolan had never had so much fun. Cruise director Demetri breezed around the wooden decks of the Tropical Bar like an MC at the Oscars, introducing the evening’s acts, one after another, with his dramatic flair. First Herman the maitre’d on the guitar, then a Swedish guest singing a rabble-rousing western song, followed by the young Scandinavian watersports dudes in drag doing a song-and-dance routine. The performers played to a packed house of wildly applauding guests. Dolan, normally a teetoodler, grabbed her pina colada and waved it into the air like a groupie at a Jimmy Buffet concert. Considering there aren’t a lot of other places vying for passengers’ attention, the entertainment by the open-air Tropical Bar, however sophomoric, was always well attended by the fun-loving unpretentious passengers Royal Clipper attracts. Another evening, a performance by a local steel band was a huge hit, and on others, Demitri energetically drummed up interest in a humble repertoire of entertainment which included a trivia contest and a musical-chairs-style silly dance contest. The captain hosted a cocktail party in the piano lounge one night, and when there wasn’t much planned, passengers were content relaxing and socializing around the Tropical Bar, where pre-dinner hors e’oeuvres are offered.

Cruise Realization No. 7: “I don’t want to leeeavvve!”

Dolan packed on that last night like a kid leaving for summer camp. She didn’t want to leave and her long face proved it. We had lived in another world for a week, where reality as we knew it was suspended. We made new friends, visited new places, and truly lost ourselves in a life at sea. All good things must come to an end. But, I already knew that, and now Dolan does too.