For the entire first week of February 2010, Joyce and I were treated to a cruise of several Caribbean islands aboard the Wind Surf sailing ship, starting and ending from Barbados. This trip was given to us as a complete surprise by owner/president Dean Schreiner at the company Christmas party in honor of my 20th anniversary at Coastal Computer Corporation, now dESCO, LLC.  Tim Brooks and I were hired at the same time by Dean, so he and Kim, Dean and Janie, and Joyce and I made the trip together.  George (and Sally) and Glenn Slay, the founders of our company, were also guests, so that made us a party of nine.

We drove to Miami, and took a flight from Miami International to Barbados. Barbados is a Caribbean island southeast of Puerto Rico in a string of islands that reach almost all the way down to South America. We set sail each day before dinner for the next island, and we would sail all night to arrive there before we awakened the next morning.

There were evenings when the winds were stiff enough to sail to the next island with sails only. When we were on the Altantic side of the string of islands, we would get that stronger Atlantic wind, but when we were on the west side of the islands, the winds were calmer. On those parts of the trip when there wasn’t enough wind to move the ship, the captain would use the engines to move us. It was always a dramatic time around 5:30 pm each night when the sails would be hoisted, and that would start to move the ship out of our current port.  Because the Wind Surf was not one of the large cruise ships, we could fit into smaller ports.  The bow would be pointed toward land, and the first sails to be deployed were on the front of the ship.  That would move the entire ship 180 degrees so that the engines could then be used to move us out of the harbor to the open sea.

Our stateroom was on the lowest deck.  This was great because we would feel the least movement of the ship.  When I looked out of the portal in our room, the water line would be between my ankles and knees. There were times when the water was more turbulent when the waves would reach over the level of the windows and sometimes splash the windows themselves. There was a gentle movement of the ship from side-to-side when we were under way, and sleeping was no problem considering the motion. But, there were times during higher winds when it was difficult to eat dinner on the top decks because of the additional motion at the top of the ship.  Lying down in bed in the room on Level 1 after dinner was the best thing to get rid of the problem.

After sailing all night, we’d wake up the next morning with a different view out our window. We would be anchored at a different port on a different island. Small orange tender boats that were carried by the Wind Surf would shuttle back and forth to the pier on the island, and we were free to walk around, go shopping, or do activities. The ship itself had internet access, but they recommended taking the laptop on the island to find access there at a Wi-Fi hotspot. It was funny to sit in an open-air, thatched-roof restaurant, fire up the laptop, and watch the emails fill my Outlook Inbox. Gilligan’s Island Online!

There were several restaurants on board. We ate our breakfasts and lunches at the Veranda, which was half-inside, half-outside on the deck. The buffet was located inside, and the grill to order custom omelets was outside. The weather was great – mid-80’s, dry and sunny, so we ate outside at a table on the deck most of the time.

For dinner, there were several inside restaurants and on-deck restaurants.  As a group, we all ate together each and every night. One particular night was seafood night on the rear deck, but the wind was so strong that it was causing extra movement of the ship. It was difficult to eat, so Joyce and I excused ourselves from the group. A few nights later, we ate at the same place on the open rear deck of the ship. The winds were calm, and the skies were clear with a canopy of stars overhead. It was a delight to eat dinner that night under the open sky.

There was an “open bridge” policy, meaning that as long as we were under way, we could go up to the bridge deck and visit.  One night after dinner, we did that.  We met the captain, a very nice man with a British accent.  The room was pitch black except for the lights of the radar and other displays.  There were no lights looking out the front windows so that the bridge crew could see what was ahead.  It was very interesting as they pointed out other large ships on the radar scope, and we could look out of the front windows and see those ships that were many miles away.  One ship they showed was an oil tanker.

There was an observation area to the front of the bridge that was sheltered from any of the other lights of the ship.  This was one of the most incredible sights during the entire cruise – looking up to see the multitudes and more multitudes of stars overhead!  Because we were out in the middle of the ocean with no land lights, it was completely black.  The Milky Way galaxy stretched from the horizon in front (as we were headed south) to overhead and finally to the rear horizon.  The constellation Orion was directly overhead with the three bright stars of Orion’s Belt straight up.  Both Joyce and I are amateur students of astronomy, and we have never seen so many stars in the sky at any time in our lives! 

During one of the final days of the cruise, we docked at Greneda.  These people like the Americans because we liberated the island back in the 80’s from Cuban communist occupation.  The ship docked against a concrete pier, so we didn’t need to run the tender shuttle boats from the ship to the shore.  We boarded a bus and headed up into the hills for a tour of much of the island.  One particularly breathtaking sight was standing at a high point on one of the hills, and looking out at the harbor where our ship was docked.

Once we returned from this tour, Joyce and I boarded the ship for lunch and a rest.  Following that, we exited the ship and walked down the pier to a mall area where we picked up some shirts and souvenirs.  There weren’t too many people that were noticing us – I would think that it’s a bigger event when the larger cruise ships come to visit.

On Sunday morning, we awakened early because we would need to go through a checkout procedure in the lounge of the ship.  They had been holding our passports all week because officials from each port would need to inspect them.  Once that was complete, we ate our final meal on board, which was breakfast at the Veranda.  Following that, we were free to gather our personal belongings and leave our stateroom and the ship.  As per instructions, we put our luggage outside the door of our room before bed last night so that they could have it all on shore for us when we left the ship. 

Dean booked a tour of Barbados for all of us for that morning.  They took care of our luggage, and the next time we saw it was at the airport that afternoon.  We boarded a bus and saw a good part of the island.  We stopped at a nice open-air restaurant for a great buffet lunch.  Our table looked out at the Atlantic Ocean – a beautiful breeze, blue sky and green water!  Following our tour of the island and lunch, we headed to the airport for the flight back to Miami.  After clearing customs in Miami, we headed back in a van to Fort Myers where Dean dropped Joyce and me off at our villa.

This was a “once-in-a-lifetime” trip as well as a touching gesture for Joyce and me, and we are extremely grateful for it and for the 20 years that we have had knowing and working with this great group of people!

Some random thoughts about the experience:

• Friends ask me if the motion was a problem.  Being on the bottom deck, we could lay and bed and feel a gentle side-to-side motion, but it wasn’t enough to cause any problems.  We slept fine, and we would wake up rested and refreshed. 
• The captain called this a Five-Star hotel on the seas.  That was true.  The capacity of the ship was 300 guests and 150 crew.  On this cruise, there were only 170 guests with the same number of crew.  Our room was serviced a few times each day, and while we were eating dinner, our steward would come into our room, turn down the bed, and lower the lighting of the cabin.  An itinerary and a few chocolates were placed on the turned-down part of the bed so we could plan out our next day.

(Check back for more comments and pictures!)