The Cruising World

by Lew Toulmin

Where can you wake up to a 21-gun salute, sail with some of the world’s best yachtsmen, watch exciting yacht races just offshore, visit the summer palace of Queen Victoria, attend a nautical evening church service with the Duke of Edinburgh and pub crawl and party late into the night? Only one place: Cowes!

For 51 weeks of the year, Cowes is a quiet, yachty town of 19,000 on the north side of the Isle of Wight, just off the south coast of Britain. But during the...

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by Lew Toulmin

Cruising is hot! According to the Cruise Lines International Association, or CLIA (80 Broad St., Ste. 1800, New York, NY 10004; phone 212/921-0066 or visit www.cruising.org), 2004 was a banner year for the cruise industry in terms of new builds and passenger growth. Last year, CLIA cruise lines capped a record-setting 5-year building boom that introduced 62 new ships to the North American market out of a total of 150 represented by CLIA.

Twelve new ships were...

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I often get asked which is the best ship afloat, in terms of its food. I would love to be able to give a simple answer and award a prize. However, after reviewing my experiences afloat, communicating with ITN readers and interviewing seagoing chefs, I don’t think the answer is that easy.

There are so many variables and obstacles, and vessels change so rapidly, that it is probably impossible to identify one ship or one line. Yes, there are surveys and polls on food afloat, but often...

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—The Cruising World is written by Lew Toulmin.

We reclined comfortably, looking up at the thousands of brilliant stars overhead. The ship swayed slightly as she drove forward at 25 knots.

Suddenly the stars shifted dramatically, galaxies appeared and great streaks of color covered the heavens. Harrison Ford whispered in our ear, saying, “And now we will see Earth’s place among the stars.” For these were not the ordinary stars as seen from an ordinary ship, these were the stars...

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Island paradise or hell on Earth? Three New Zealand judges apparently took the latter view as they sentenced six of Pitcairn island’s few male inhabitants to two to six years in prison for numerous rapes and assaults that took place over a 40-year period on the last remnant of the British empire in the South Pacific.

Pitcairn is the resting place of the famous H.M.S. Bounty, which was burned and sunk there by mutineers in 1790. The tiny island, only 2½ by 1½ miles, is...

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Recently, a sharp-eyed ITN reader booked a Holland America Line cruise to Alaska for 18 days, paying for herself and her roommate. Three weeks before the cruise, she received from the cruise line a puzzling document requiring her to sign and send back a preauthorization to hold $60 worth of credit per person per day for the cruise. For the two travelers, this added up to a substantial $2,160.

She protested to Holland America and informed ITN, saying that she hardly ever bought things...

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