Cruisin’

We’ve all followed the terrible news of the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster off the coast of Italy. Our hearts go out to all of those on the ship. Jack and I have been on many cruises and have always had delightful experiences. On one trip we were cruising through the Greek Islands. I had a commission to paint Komisa, a small coastal harbor village. Our route took us by the town, albeit several miles out in the ocean. We were invited to dinner with the captain a couple of nights before and mentioned this to him. He offered to sail closer to shore so we could take pictures from the ship. But he warned that there were several rocks underwater so he was limited as to how close he could safely get. He was acutely aware of the ship’s safety yet as accommodating as he could be. As we passed Komisa he slowed the ship so we could get a bunch of pictures. We have found this with all of the cruises we’ve been on: Safely First, Guest’s requests Second.

One of our favorite cruises was on the sailing ship, Royal Clipper. Most of our voyage was totally under wind power. The engines were only used coming into port and when there was no wind.

The Royal Clipper is anchored to the left of Jack, you can see how small it is compared to the monster megacruise ship to my right.

Out in the open ocean Jack got to take a turn at the helm!

That’s me up on the crow’s nest, I’m the little person on the left. To get up there you had to climb the rigging on the right. For safety everyone had to wear a harness. The view was incredible, I felt like a pirate!

If you ever have a chance to take a cruise through the Panama Canal DO IT! This is well worth taking. We went on the inaugural cruise of the Carnival Inspiration, the first megacruise ship to go through the canal. There were only a few feet on each side of the ship to the canal walls. We read David McCullough’s book The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal and were so glad we had.  If you have wanted to take a cruise just go. You’ll have a lot of fun. Hugs, Mikki Senkarik

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