Setting Sail

Lisbon has a very nice Cruise terminal. In fact, most of the waterfront along the Tagus River has been redeveloped and features a beautiful promenade walkway that seemingly goes on for miles. You can walk, bike, rent scooters or just sit and watch people go by. The cruise terminal had three or four massive cruise ships docked and our driver from the hotel thought we meant to go to the regular cruise terminal. I finally had to have him Google a picture of the Royal Clipper before he understood we were not leaving on a regular cruise ship. For about an hour he was actually lost in his own hometown and had to make some calls to find the address of where we were catching the Royal Clipper. What’s travel without some hiccups? Fortunately my better half had spotted our ship the night before from one of the hop on-hop off tour buses so she knew what to look for and eventually we got our driver to the right spot by keeping an eye out for five very tall masts. All was well and we got to see parts of Lisbon not seen by the average tourist. And our driver learned something new about his city.

On our flights from Denver to Philadelphia and then on to Lisboa we had been the exception in that we were wearing COVID masks when most of the folks around us were not.We probably wouldn’t have worn them either save for the fact that we would be getting COVID tests at the port prior to being allowed on the Royal Clipper (plus you had to have proof of all five vaccinations). Flunking the COVID test meant having flown a long, long way for nothing so it had been strongly recommended to wear masks up to the point of setting sail. Don’t think cruise ships taking off from American shores are still being this careful or rigid about testing and vaccination, but still, we could appreciate the effort as the Royal Clipper is far from your normal cruise ship gargantuan. That said, my wife and I had worked darn hard to avoid having someone stick a swab way, way, way up our nostrils and it was about as unpleasant an experience as I had anticipated. As one of my friends would say: “Good times!” Not.

Fortunately there were no hiccups with the COVID test (though one unfortunate couple did test positive and were denied boarding) and we finally were able to stroll up the gangway to see our home for the next 16 days. Our luggage was already in our cabin so we were free to wander around and start to get our bearings That’s nautical lingo for knowing where the heck you are - as in port from starboard, bow from stern, and where’s the dining room?

So here’s the thing. We knew the Royal Clipper was a large sailing vessel, but at 179 feet in length she would still be dwarfed by most of today’s modern cruise ships. The average length of today’s mega-sized cruise ship is 1,000 feet, or three football fields. No big deal, as up and down motion from front to back is something we had experienced even on the Royal Clippers’ larger cousins in stormy seas. What we had not thought through (imagine that), and would come to bite us later that evening, was the beam measurement - how wide the ship is across. The Royal Clipper has a beam of 53 feet which sounds reasonable to the uninitiated but compared to the very wide cruise ships you may be more familiar with  53 feet is like a log compared to the width of a football field. Today’s larger ‘floating resorts’ are more than twice as wide. You’re thinking, “So what?” Well, the so what is that at only 53 feet in width the Royal Clipper not only moves up and down fore and aft, she also rolls from side to side far more than any ship I had ever been on. And the forecast for leaving Lisbon that night was for some stormy seas which meant that we were about to experience about as close to an ocean roller coaster as you can get. When dinner was served later that evening you had to hold on to the tables, which fortunately were bolted to the deck, for fear of literally falling out of your chair (several guests learned this lesson the hard way) and it was rough enough that stacks of white china dishes were sent crashing and bottles of wine tumbling as the boat pitched up and down, left and right in a dizzying (and nauseating) number of combinations. Just what landlubbers eating their first meal at sea needed. But at least I now knew where the dining room was.

The cabins on the Royal Clipper are surprisingly roomy and the first night continued with the rock and roll of the sea. The cabin steward had put up what they call leeboards to prevent guests from being pitched out of the bed with the roll of the ship. Maybe seatbelts (bedbelts?) would have been more appropriate.  Scopamine, a motion sickness medication, was perhaps even more popular on board that first night than red wine and you could see many passengers sporting the scopamine patch behind their ears for several days. I’ll admit to feeling slightly nauseous for a day or two myself but after several days and nights of constant swaying to and fro you do start to feel better which meant that it was time for our next port, Safi, Morocco where we could learn the pleasures of land sickness which is the opposite of sea sickness and means you continue to feel like your on board ship even when you’re rock solid on good old terra firma. Our first port of call was not supposed to be Safi but we had to skip our put in at Portimao, Portugal due to the rough seas and high swells. It was just too rough to get the ship into port. Which worked out for the best as the love of my life swore that if the seasickness didn’t subside she was heading home the very next place we touched land. 

Safi (pronounced by the locals as “Asfi”) is known as one of Morocco’s main fishing ports for the country’s sardine industry. Here we boarded buses and took a 2 1/2 hour bus trip inland to the city of Marrakech which sits at the crossroads of the ancient trading routes heading north from Southern Africa and west from the Middle East. Marrakech is a blend of third world meets 21st century and the streets are the first sign that you’re not in America, or most of Europe for that matter, anymore. Carts pulled by donkeys mixed with Mercedes Benz automobiles. Most of the population between Safi and Marakech appear to my western eyes living at just above the subsistence level. Morocco does seems forward thinking for an Islamic country in its cultural tolerance and the ladies (perhaps the best barometer of what’s going on anywhere) sported everything from the classical hijab to more western attire that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow on the streets of New York or Paris. And it was kinda nice to just be back on solid ground…

The Marrakech McDonalds welcomes you to town