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April 1998 Polynesia PagesBEFORE THE CRUISE
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April 1998 Polynesia Cruise
by Mitchell Brooke
Part 1-Before the cruise
I booked the Poly pretty soon after the 1998 Singles Cruises were announced. I had sailed on Polynesia four times before and I wanted to sail on the Flying Cloud in the British Virgin Islands. But when Windjammer decided that the Poly would be hosting a BVI Singles Cruise, I decided to sign up. I also decided to book two weeks. By spending the first week on the Poly's regular itinerary and the second week on the special BVI singles week, I managed to have a two week Windjammer vacation without changing ships and still visited a different island every day. I'm surprised no one else thought of this.
Before I tell you about the trip, I want to tell you about an interesting phenomenon that occurred before the trip. I put my name on the sailing list as soon as I booked the trip and for a few months I heard only now and then from the two other folks on the list. They were both experienced Windjammers so no one had many questions. I figured that as the cruise drew closer, we would get back in contact and decide where we wanted to meet before the Stowaway...maybe swap a few stories... one or two email messages a month.....well...
Right before Christmas, two or three more names showed up on the list. I emailed them individually and found that they were first timers and had many questions. I decided that I would send "carbons" to all the folks on the list when I answered individual questions in case the others had similar concerns. A gentleman in California was also doing the same and soon everyone was doing it. Between the five of us..we averaged one or two messages a day...and the April Polynesia Singles List was born.
As Tuck's Windjammer Sailing List grew so did our distribution list. By the end of January the list had grown to over ten and I could count on 5 or six messages a day.
From there the list and the email volume grew exponentially. By March there would would regularly be over a hundred messages every day.
The gentleman from California had by this time set up a web site with our names, pictures, flight information, a short biography and where we were staying before and after the cruise. He also provided links to several web pages that would be of interest to us and a Message Board for us and other Windjammer fans to communicate. Both of these were quite helpful. On my last cruise there were about six of us who had been emailing but it was a day or two before we found each other on the ship. This time I recognized almost everyone on Stowaway night.
I don't know the exact count but by the time I left for the first leg of my cruise there were over thirty people on the list ...nearly 25 per cent of the passengers. (There were also more than 20 folks from the April 27th cruise on the distribution list and the web page)
Some of the correspondence regarded the trip... what to bring, how much
do drinks cost, and where to meet in Tortola. There were also some interesting
conversations about men and women, college hoops, volleyball, chicken fights,
lemonade, mind erasers, swizzles, Painkillers, music and Gilligan's Island.
Sometimes it was like eavesdropping and other times it was like trying to
shout to be heard. It was quite fun and helped make this Windjammer cruise
unique. Of all the trips I've made on the Polynesia this was the first time
I was acquainted with this many passengers beforehand.
April 1998 Polynesia PagesBEFORE THE CRUISE
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