It actually was a dark and stormy night, this particular night in May in the Mediterranean aboard the four-mast Star Flyer. Up late in the cozy library typing on my laptop, I'd taken a break to get coffee from the 24/7 coffeemaker at the bar. It had been raining. But just as I headed back across the deck toward the library, the rain came pelting sideways. Worse, though, was the wind. It was actually howling as if Jack London had written it to life.
The crew had given us a lot of safety information. The usual muster drill was held before I could even open a suitcase. It lasted forever, and then they called a second drill some 10 minutes later. I was kind of annoyed then. Kind of grateful now.
One thing the program director had drilled into my head was "leave one hand for the ship," meaning have one hand free in case you have to grab for balance. At the moment, there was nothing to grab but wet air, so I decided to make a break for the library door, where I grabbed the handle and pulled.
Pulled harder. The door opened, slightly until the wind slammed it shut.
I pulled harder, the wind just laughed. I felt as if I were in a bad cartoon. At least no one was around to pull out the cellphone to make a video. Then the ship's nurse came strolling by. Really, he was strolling. He smiled, gave a nod, strolled on.
"HELP ME!" I really did say it in capital letters. He did. We went to the other library door, which opened the other way _ with the wind, rather than against it. The nurse left, I stumbled toward a sofa beside my laptop, feeling like a Hemingway character. Now this was real sailing!
I had expected some kind of old-style, romantic sea voyage when I signed up for the Star Flyer cruise.
Just looking at a tall ship festooned with sails is a ticket to the past. And as I researched the Star Flyer, one of three in the Star Clipper fleet of tall ships, I was also taken back to a cruise I took years ago aboard the schooner Lewis R. French in Maine. That ship, built in 1871, was much smaller and carried a maximum of 21 passengers. But it had ropes and sails, and a captain with a beard. And we got to raise the jibs, take the wheel for a while, and do other old-salt types of chores.
I imagined a similar sort of situation aboard the Star Flyer, though on a larger scale.
I signed up for the cruise scheduled for early May, which I knew was in the Mediterranean, though I didn't really study the ports of call in detail. First, I expected the ship to be the star of this trip; and second, when you're depending on wind power, you've got to go with the, well, blow. So I didn't have my heart set on any place in particular _ except on the deck, helping raise a sail or two.
Boarding in Barcelona and seeing the 360-foot Star Flyer in the flesh (or the teak, brass, steel, and rigging) was as majestic, romantic, cinematic as I'd hoped. As we pulled out of port that night, we experienced a sail-away ritual that was performed every night of our weeklong trip: the sails (most or all of the 16) rose slowly from heaps of canvas to filled white triangles against dark-blue skies, while the pathos-filled "Conquest of Paradise" by Vangelis was played and the champagne was downed.
There was plenty to make a passenger's heart kind of puff up and pound in a good way on this trip. As my friend and cabin-mate Lisa said later, "I feel sorry for anyone who's not me right now."
There were a few disappointments _ for the most part because of worlds old and new colliding.
The Star Clipper fleet is the dream come true of the line's founder, Mikael Krafft, a Swedish entrepreneur with a lifelong passion for sailing. Krafft was in love with the old clipper ships _ the fastest, sleekest ships at sea _ and the vessel of choice for carrying goods on the trade routes of the 19th century; it took a while, but eventually they were squeezed out by steam-driven vessels, especially with the completion of the Suez Canal shortcut in 1920.
Krafft wanted to build new clipper ships, still based on wind and sails and the sleek silhouette, but with enough room for 170 passengers who were used to having all the modern comforts _ in luxurious style. Like the yachts he'd sailed around in, actually.
So the Star Flyer and its sister ship the Star Clipper, along with the newer and larger Royal Clipper and upcoming Royal Cloud, lose a little bit of the old, and a little bit of the modern, in the process.
Our cabin, for instance, was tiny. Putting 170 passengers (and 75 crew members) on a svelte, built-for-speed clipper ship, you're going to have to scrimp on floor space. I usually like small spaces _ nestlike, I think of them. But two people, plus two sets of luggage in a cabin measuring 118 square feet (150 is considered compact)? Some fancy footwork may be required to negotiate around each other if you both find the need to walk around at the same time (I used the bed for a bypass route). Consider upgrading to a deck cabin, for more square feet (150, and fewer bruises). The cabins on the newer ships are bigger.
Another modern feature are engines. The ship doesn't have to rely on wind alone, and though it likes to be as fuel-saving as possible, it only uses wind power about 30 percent of the time. So the masts were not always up, and I never saw any passengers helping raise sails, though I hear it happens. Our captain, who was obviously passionate about the old sailing ships, said we needed the engines because we needed to be on schedule. What we were doing wasn't "real sailing," he said _ that's when he did the 45-degree angle with his hand. You're going fast when that happens, or into crazy waves.
Something heart pounding.
We did, however, learn how to tie knots. I think one or two of my fellow passengers are still trying to extricate their fingers from their handiwork.
We also could go out and relax, hammock style, on the bowsprit on nets slung from the edge of the deck right over the water. Another sailorly activity was getting to climb to the crow's nest _ wearing a safety harness.
