![]() ![]() You can have your laundry done, and even keep in touch with home – sometimes – via the patchy internet. Royal Clipper is fully air conditioned, and the food operation on board is superb. None of this should imply a lack of creature comforts or modern amenities. ![]() This is no mere adventure around a string of compelling Caribbean hot spots this is time travel: two voyages in one. She is nothing less than a sea-going cathedral, embellished with a swathe of taut, gently shuddering block and tackle, gleaming brass, and burnished teak underfoot. With her gorgeous sheer and blue accented hull, the five skyscraping masts and acres of lethargic, billowing canvas, the Royal Clipper has a sublime, bewitching stance when seen from any angle. Such quirks are just part of what add up to a quixotic, addictive whole that became utterly compelling over the week. For the first day, I was a bit disconcerted to hear the sporadic splash of the ocean as it thumped against the twin portholes in my cabin, giving it the appearance of an over-energetic twin tub washing machine. ![]() Long, low, narrow and unencumbered by stabilisers, the Royal Clipper will roll, rock, and even pitch gently from time to time. This vast, gloriously anachronistic enigma of a vessel is a siren call to a totally different traveller the ‘less is more’ type that instinctively understands, and heeds, the ageless romance of a tall, towering sailing ship, heeling into the wind under a full spread of canvas just like generations of her forebears.Īnd heel she does, quite magnificently. Passengers whose must-have list for a Caribbean cruise includes diversions such as rock climbing walls, an array of theatre entertainment and enormous, round-the-clock food options, should look away now. With her raked bowsprit and her quintet of towering, ochre-coloured masts, the ship is unmistakable. The largest sailing ship built for almost a century, this 5,000-ton vessel carries 228 passengers on week-long winter forays around the highlights of the eastern Caribbean on two alternating itineraries out of Bridgetown. As I discovered during the course of the next week, wowing the crowds was something Royal Clipper does with breathtaking ease. Then, as the haunting theme of Vangelis’ 1492: Conquest Of Paradise began to float out across the ink black waters of Bridgetown harbour, the cameras began to flash along the length of the big cruise ship. In the silence, you could almost hear the sound of jaws dropping to the deck. As she began to get under way, passengers on the nearby P&O Ventura came out onto their cabin balconies to watch us go. The warm breeze hit them with an audible slap, and the great ship began to strain like a thoroughbred in the starting stalls. One after another, 42 of them unfurled from the skeletal steel crossbeams that framed the five towering masts of the Royal Clipper to fill the midnight Bajan sky. The crowd on deck stood in hushed, awed wonder as the first sails began to descend like ghostly, off-white theatre curtains. The spectacular five-masted sailing ship Royal Clipper turns heads wherever she goes. ![]()
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