Guest Robert Weir — who is a writer, author, editor and speaker — took a Royal Clipper cruise in April and blogged about it. We’ll be posting his blog in installments so you can read about his journey. Enjoy!
Crew use electric winches to pull halyards and raise two of Royal Clipper's four jibs.
The sun is shining when I walk a mile from the bus stop to the shipping terminal. Three others walk with me, stopping once in a while to take photographs of the blue sea and colorful flowers and trees. A guard at the entry checks my passport while the others show only their vessels’ reboarding pass.
A mist is falling as I request permission to board Royal Clipper. After check-in in the main lounge, a steward shows me to my cabin. My first question is in regard to Internet service, and I learn that, in contrast to previous promises, it is not working aboard the ship. So, I quickly stow my gear, grab my laptop, and return to the terminal where I had seen a Wi-Fi sign. The mist has added heft and become rain.
Mariano, the ship’s marine biologist and lecturer, greets me by name even though we had met only once briefly. He directs me to a self-help kiosk where I can buy a Wi-Fi card for $5.00 Barbadian, and I am glad that I still have a bill of that denomination left in my wallet. For this amount, I can connect to the Internet via my computer for one hour or via a seaport computer for 30 minutes. I choose mine, wanting to attach a document, a manuscript that I had been editing, to one email to a client. But my computer can’t locate the signal.
