Royal Clipper Grenadines Cruise Review and Photos

Here is a link to my pictures and my review for our recent Royal Clipper Grenadines cruise. We had a great time and hope to take another Star Clipper cruise in the near future!

Pictures-

http://pix.kg/p/9100477870103%3A512356311/scl

Ship

We had been on a cruise with Star Clippers before (on the Star Flyer in French Polynesia), so we knew what to expect. I prefer the Royal Clipper because the ship is a little bigger and the cabins are also a bit larger. The ship holds about 220 passengers, but there were only about 160 on our cruise. I don’t think the ship would have felt crowded if it were full, but it was definitely nice that it wasn’t full. The bars and restaurants were never crowded and we never had to wait for a table at dinner or even wait in much of a line at the buffet breakfasts and lunches. The dining room was beautiful—more ornate than on the Star Flyer. There were plenty of lounge chairs on deck—even plenty in the shade and lots of areas on deck to get away from it all if you wanted. There were three pools—but my husband said it was cold, so I never got in. It didn’t seem like too many people used the pools. We really enjoyed the sail away each night—watching them hoist the sails to some dramatic music. We did not get the opportunity to do any of the watersports off of the platform, but people we spoke with who did enjoyed it. Sunsets from the ship were gorgeous!

Cabin

We were in a category 3 room, on the lowest deck and right next to the dining room. We booked last minute at a special rate, so we did not have much choice of a room location. I was a bit worried about this location because of possible noise or smells from the dining room—but we never experienced any problems. The bed was comfortable (two twins pushed together), and larger than I remembered. Toiletries were provided, except for hair conditioner, so make sure to bring your own. (I needed lots of conditioner after all the tangles from snorkeling!)

Food

Overall we enjoyed the food on the ship. Breakfast and lunch were buffet. Breakfasts were my favorite meal. The omelets were great! The omelet chef actually remembered me from our Star Flyer trip two and a half years ago. What a great memory! Lunch buffets were usually themed, for instance there were Italian, Seafood and Creole days. The quality of the food was good for lunch. The dinner menu changed each night, and they always offered a steak and pasta dish if you didn’t like the other offerings. Probably my favorite thing that I ate was the swordfish. When they had filet mignon, that was of good quality too. One day at lunch they had a chocolate cheesecake, which was really more like a warm mousse and it was my favorite dessert of the trip. My husband’s favorite was the veal dish. One night they did not have any desserts that I liked, so I asked if they had any of the straciatella ice cream left over from the previous night that I could have. And they did! I thought that was great service. They also had afternoon and midnight snacks. We were never out for the midnight snack, but did go to the afternoon snack a few times. I’d usually just have a cookie or two, but my husband enjoyed things like tacos, meatballs and wings.

Service

Our cabin steward was great! The room was always spotless when we returned to it. He also made a cute towel monkey and turtle. He knew our names and always greeted us when we would see him around the ship. Service in the dining room was good. The cruise director was very nice and always tried to answer our questions. I was disappointed that the marine biologist was no longer on the ship—she had taken a job elsewhere.

Passengers

We were some of the youngest passengers on the ship (30’s), but we met some very interesting people of all ages. There was a good mix of nationalities- many British and some other Europeans as well as Americans and Canadians. We really enjoyed socializing with everyone on the ship and listening to some great travel stories!

Ports- We really enjoyed the ports on this trip. I have been to many Caribbean islands, but never to this area of the Caribbean. Many of the islands were more lush and mountainous than I expected.

Grenada- This was our first day in port and it was a very rainy day. (Luckily that was our only rainy day of the trip) We were glad we had booked an excursion instead of going to the beach like we originally planned. (Although, I would have liked to have checked out some of the beaches!) We arrived at 1 pm and departed at 11:45 pm. We took the ship’s excursion, nutmeg and falls. We were in a minibus and the guide gave a lot of great information. We drove up through the mountains and I was surprised at how lush the island was. Just beautiful. We first stopped at an area where the guide showed us a lot of different spices and fruits that are available on the island. Then we toured a nutmeg factory. Next (my favorite part of the tour) was a visit to the Concord Waterfalls. The guide described it as a “trickle”, but I thought it was beautiful-- I think it was flowing more than usual because of the rain that day. If I thought that waterfall was beautiful, I can only imagine how beautiful the ones are where you had to hike to them were. (I would have loved to see them, but hiking is just not for me!). After the tour we walked around the town a bit. It was a Sunday though, so many stores were closed. I would love to come back to this island one day and spend a week there.

Carriacou, Captain’s Best- Originally on the “Captain’s Best” day we were going to Union Island. But they changed it at the last minute and we went to Carriacou instead. We arrived at 10 am and departed at 6 pm. The ship offered an island tour, but we decided to do our own thing. We took a private taxi tour of the island. The driver gave us some interesting commentary, we stopped at some gorgeous overlooks, saw a boat being built, and then he dropped us off at Paradise Beach. I was not that impressed with the beach, but we had a great Caribbean lunch at the Hardwood Bar. Then we hired a guy to take us on his boat to Sandy Island for beaching it and snorkeling. The beach here was beautiful! We arranged for him to pick us up two hours later. When we arrived we were the only people on the island. By the time we left there were maybe 8 other people there. That was paradise! We did some pretty good snorkeling on the reef as well. We went back to the Hardwood Bar and had a beer. Then our driver came back to pick us up and take us back to the ship. That night we enjoyed a beautiful sunset over the neighboring islands from the ship.

Tobago Cays- We had originally planned to take the snorkeling excursion to the reef in the morning, then to enjoy the beach barbeque in the afternoon. Unfortunately, the excursion was cancelled due to high winds. I was disappointed because snorkeling is a high priority for us, and I had heard how great it was on that trip. Oh well, we still had a fantastic day. We arrived at 9:30 am and departed at 5 pm. We were on the first tender to the island—and the only passengers on that tender! I didn’t mind that one bit because I was able to get some pictures of the beach without too many people on them. We hired a boat man to take us to the neighboring island so we could snorkel with the turtles. We arranged for him to pick us up two and a half hours later. This island was even more beautiful than the one where we first landed. The beach was a sand spit that jutted out from the island. Because we got there early, there were not too many people on the island or too many people snorkeling. Although there were lots of boats moored, I think most people just hadn’t made it to the island yet. We found a shady spot to leave our stuff and went straight for the snorkeling. We snorkeled for about an hour and saw a couple of starfish and at least eight turtles. It was one of the highlights of the trip for sure! We then took a little break and I walked around and took some pictures while my husband hiked up to the top of the island. He took some great photos of the view and also saw a couple of iguanas. We then got back in the water for one last snorkel with the turtles before the boat man came back for us. Back on the island where the ship was tendering into we went to the beach barbeque. (Finally, I got to have a burger for lunch!) After lunch we walked over to the other side of the island to try snorkeling. It was very shallow and a bit of current. There was a lot of coral and small fish, but nothing spectacular. My husband hiked to the top of this island as well and took some great photos of the view.

St. Vincent- We arrived at 8 am and departed at noon. We took the first tender over to the island and hired a private taxi. We visited the fort and the botanical gardens. We then went back to town and walked around a bit before going back to the ship. We had originally planned to take the tour, the falls of baliene, but this tour was cancelled at the beginning of the cruise. I also would have liked to of had more time on the island to see more sites, or at least visit a beach. Maybe we will come back one day!

Bequia- We arrived at 2 pm and departed at 7 pm. This was one of my favorite islands, and I could definitely see myself coming back here for a vacation. We opted to do the ship’s 4x4 tour of the island. We did enjoy the views around the island and the visit to the turtle sanctuary, but in hindsight, I wish that we had opted for the beach drop instead because we heard it was nice. After the tour we walked around town and found it very charming. We made it back to the jetty for the last tender. While we were waiting for the tender, we watched one of the most beautiful sunsets of the trip.

Martinique- We arrived the city around 8 am (I am missing our itinerary for that day, so I may be a bit off on the timing). We docked here which made it more convenient getting on and off the ship. We took the ship’s tour where we walked around the city—saw a beautiful library, spent some time at the market, then drove up to the Church of Balata and went to some gorgeous botanical gardens (these were my favorite botanical gardens of the trip.). We went back to the ship around noon and moved on to the beach, Anse d’Arlet. We were on the first tender over. The beach was nice, somewhat darker sand, and calm, clear water. We made our way down to a hotel where we rented chairs for $5 each. There were not very many available, so we were lucky to be some of the first ship passengers there. We tried snorkeling, but did not see too much. It was nice, relaxing beach time.

St. Lucia- We wanted to see as much of St. Lucia as we could so we opted to do our own thing in the morning. We arrived at Marigot Bay at 7:30 am and were on the first tender to shore. We caught a private taxi and arranged a tour with him for the next four hours. We had thought about doing one of the ship’s tours, but they were all in the afternoon and would mean that we would miss the snorkeling trip. There wasn’t too much to do in Marigot and most of the attractions we wanted to visit were closer to Soufriere, where the ship was arriving at 1:30 pm, so we decided to make the most of our morning. St. Lucia is VERY mountainous and lush, and gorgeous views abound. We stopped for a nice view of the ship and Marigot. Then we stopped for another ship view and Rosseau Beach. We stopped for some fishing village views, a banana plantation and a couple of amazing Piton views. (I had wanted to get views of the Pitons from both the water and from the mountains. I’m so glad we got to see them from such different perspectives.) We visited a small waterfall and the volcano. Then we took the rough road to Anse Chastanet where I had hoped to do some snorkeling. The black sand beach here was beautiful. Unfortunately, the water was very churned up. We could see that there was plenty of coral and fish—we just couldn’t see it very well because the water was murky. We ended up just relaxing on the beach for a while then had lunch at the hotel. It was good, but a bit pricey. We then took a boat back to Soufriere (that is definitely preferred to taking the rough road!) and waited for the tender to arrive so we could get back on the ship for the snorkeling trip. We then boarded the tender with about 30 other passengers. We snorkeled at the base of a mountain and also had a great view of the Pitons from the water here. The water was calm and clear (unlike the water at Anse Chastanet!). There was quite a bit of coral and some other interesting things. We saw a centipede looking thing on a rock in the ocean—I had never seen anything like that before. Also saw lots of fish. We had about 45 minutes to snorkel which was ample. We made it back to the ship with just enough time to shower and be ready for the photo tender where I photographed the ship under sail. This was our favorite day of the cruise and I would love to come back to St. Lucia for a vacation.

Barbados- Our flight was not until 4:30, so we had a lot of time in Barbados and didn’t want to just sit around the airport. We hired a private taxi to give us a 4 and a half hour tour. We made a few stops in Bridgetown, viewed sugar plantations, took in views from a watch tower and explored beautiful, wild Bathsheba on the east coast of the island before being dropped off at the airport. I’d highly recommend doing this. We really enjoyed our taxi driver. I thought this was a better (and much less expensive!) option than doing the ship’s tour since we could be on our own timetable.

Some things to consider-

This cruise is very different from a big ship cruise—and we liked that. There is not as much waiting and herding. It goes to some great ports, many of which the bigger ships just cannot get into. In some ports it offers a tender both to town and the beach which was really convenient. Although we never used it, in some ports, they had watersports from the platform where you could kayak, sail, or waterski. They also had a great snorkeling trip in St. Lucia from the tender, which only cost 1 Euro per person (because it was a marine park)—and that ended up being some of the best snorkeling of the trip!

Activities- there are not many activities offered on the ship—no big shows, no casinos, etc. They do have some evening entertainment- talent show, fashion show, pirate dress up competition. There was a singer on board and also one night they had a steel drum band which I enjoyed. I don’t think this cruise ship is appropriate for children— they would be very bored. Personally, I didn’t miss the extra entertainment. We were usually pretty tired from all our day time on-shore activities that we didn’t stay up too late anyway.

Port Planning- I am a planner by nature, and this is just not something that you can do on this cruise. Usually I would prefer to prebook some activities on the islands with outside vendors as opposed to booking the ship’s shore excursions. But you just have to go with the flow on this cruise—you don’t know what your times in port will be until the night before and they tend to change, and on our cruise the order of the islands was also switched between the first and second days.

Thanks for that. Very nice review and you fitted a lot in to that holiday. Looks that you, like us, have become committed Starclipper travellers.

Great review.... Your sunset photos in Bequia were fabulous!

I noticed the flying jib wasn't set on the sail-by.... Were they making repairs on it?

Aloha,

john

Thank-you for the great review and pictures. Makes the waiting a little more bearable....

Great review.... Your sunset photos in Bequia were fabulous!

 

I noticed the flying jib wasn't set on the sail-by.... Were they making repairs on it?

 

Aloha,

 

john

Hello, I know that one of the sails tore during the trip, so they could have been repairing it.

Hello, I know that one of the sails tore during the trip, so they could have been repairing it.

Did you catch the sewing machine they have on board? It was huge! On our cruise the Main Royal (the highest sail on the main mast) had to be repaired. It was quite a site to see the crewman climb all the way to the top of the mast!

Aloha,

John

Your pictures were very impressive. What kind of camera did you use? Did you photoshop your pictures? The colors are beautiful. And how did you get the underwater pictures? Mine never come out. Apparently I need to get a better camera.

I never saw the sewing machine, that would be interesting! I only heard through the grapevine that one of the sails had torn.

Barb, I only cropped and zoomed in a couple of my pictures, no photoshop. But I have a setting on my camera for vivid colors, so that helped make some of the pictures pop. I also use the same camera for the underwater shots, with an underwater case. My camera is the Canon sx230. I have had it since May of last year and have really enjoyed it-- I think it often takes better pictures than my large, more expensive canon camera!

Thank for the review, I looking into sailing within the next 5 years or so. btw your pics are gone, any way you can bring them back?

Thank you for such a nice review!

After reading your write up I had to let you in on a great place to go. We are cruiser's and also like going and staying at an island as well. We spent a week this past Jan in Roatan Island at Anthony's Key Resort and had a wonderful time. They have snorkel weekly packages that take you out in the morning and one in the afternoon. The snorkeling is excellent at all the places they took us. The resort is all inclusive as well with three meals a day that are great. I had some of the best fish dinners there. Check out there web site and try them out sometime. You will love it there.

Hi,

When you caught the taxi tour from Marigot, was it easy enough to sort a tour and do you know roughly how much you paid? We are on this trip in Jan 2014 and there are so many things we want to see. Also, was the sail around for the pitons photograph after everyone was back on ship?

Many thanks,

Shilu