World Boat

Helen and I are having a lotta-cruise period right now.

Looking back a year, we did a 10-day Alaska cruise, and a week in the Mediterranean. Looking ahead a year sees us onboard in Alaska again for two weeks, and another week in Hawaii.

That's 17 days out of the past year, and 21 in the coming one.

We have actually toyed with the idea of a voyage around the world, but somehow they are just not right.

Take the Holland America round-the-world cruise that sails at the start of 2017. It is a voyage of 111 days. You might think that the problem is that it's too long, but that isn't it at all. It isn't long enough.

The first few days illustrate what I mean. The ships sails from Fort Lauderdale, crosses the Caribbean, and heads through the Panama Canal. How wonderful is the Caribbean, and how many stops should they do?

There is exactly one stop, and that one is Cartegna, Columbia. They spend 4 days at see, and only one in port.

Once through the canal, they do a nice job of Central America, visiting three countries with only one day at sea. After that they turn north, visiting exactly one city in Mexico, and one stop in the USA at San Diego before heading across the Pacific.

Let's fix this entire part of the voyage. Add in stops in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, and one more west-coast Mexican port. My personal taste would be to add more, but am trying to keep things light. Even so I've turned their 111-day voyage into one lasting 114 days.

They also rush Hawaii, And Japan, but I haven't bothered to figure out by how much. Let's just add two more stops to each; and now the total cruise length is 118 days.

In the Mediterranean, their priority seem to be setting a hurried pace. They do one very cool thing, in that they head a bit off the straight route, hitting one Greek island and heading to Istanbul, Turkey. Well done. Then they head west until they hit Gibraltar.

If you were designing that leg of the voyage, wouldn't you hit another Greek Isle, have at least one stop in Italy, perhaps see Malta, have a day on the French Riviera, and a couple of days in Spain. That would be 6 shore days at a minimum. They actually do a Greek isle, Malta, and two Spanish stops, or 4 shore days. Let's beef up our make-believe voyage to a new total of 120.

I think you get my point. Investing 111 days and quite a few tens of thousands of dollars on a World cruise would not prove worthwhile if you end up feeling short-changed.

As a result, this trip just isn't for us. Of course, there are other world cruises, but all I've investigated so far fall short of my fantasy trip.

Perhaps someday the perfect trip-around-the-world will surface, and we shall go.

Always fun to dream.