After owning small cruising sailboats for about twenty years my wife and I did the calculation that we could sell our last boat and go on two of three cruises a year. The big cost of cruising, by the way, is not so much the ship but expensive shore excursions that sometimes take you away from the ship overnight.
I get all the complaints people have against cruising but for us we have seen so much of the world in relative comfort. The trick is to plan trips around the shore excursions and what experiences you want to have. The ship is just the means to get to those experiences without having to hop on and off airplanes frequently.
It's also possible to do this on "cruise ships" that aren't "cruise ships". My wife and I toured the Dalmation coast (Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece) on the https://www.yachtcharterfleet.com/luxury-charter-yacht-48957... ten years ago - a cruise, but a cruise with ~30 other people, not ~6000. It's a big difference! The ship itself was, as you say, really just the way to get there; everything happened on-shore.
Yes, smaller boats are definitely of higher appeal to me. Went on a Galapagos cruise years ago and the max amount of passengers was 83 - we had 80 on our cruise. Sadly the dynamics of that trip have changed and I don't know if I would as enthusiastically recommend it (it's become way more commercialized and you don't get to see nearly as much as we did).
The big ships have zero appeal to me.
> a cruise, but a cruise with ~30 other people, not ~6000.
This is the sort of thing that tempts me - an enchanting vision, like something out of "Death on the Nile", only minus the death. Just a small floating hotel that takes you to interesting places, not a floating amusement park combined with buffet.
This is a point, I think. Is it great with cruise traffic to Svalbard? Maybe not. Is it better than having all those people fly to Longyearbyen by plane, and wander around on guided tours in the wilderness? Definitively.
> Is it better than having all those people fly to Longyearbyen by plane, and wander around on guided tours in the wilderness? Definitively.
Don't see how you can make that determination. All those people are flying to Tromso or whatever anyway to get on the boat. And the boat is an ecological disaster. Plus the boat belching out 1000s of people into Longyearbyen is a mess for the people there. They don't stay in the hotels or go on the tours provided by local tour operators, hurting the local economy.
There's a reason why Svalbard is currently imposing sweeping regulation on cruise ships. They are not a plus for the archipelago or the community. Just like everywhere else cruise ships operate, they serve mostly to capture as much as the financial upside from tourism as possible while leaving as little on the plate for the locals as possible, while dumping them with externalities.
We went on a river cruise last year (Viking, on the Danube). I thought of it like a bus tour of that part of Europe, except the hotel moves along with you.
They often are. Still, the question is always how bad they are per tourist, and I suspect that the solo sailing folks aren't much better in that regard.
Crew/passengers on a small sailboat will use less fresh water in a day than a cruise ship passenger uses to flush the toilet once.
They will know exactly how much water they used down to the quart, same with diesel. They will have very tight energy budgets as well and track it by the watt hour. Their energy will likely come from renewable sources.
Instead of daily hot showers, on a small boat you get a cold salt water shower every few days with a pint of fresh water at the end to rinse.
I agree. Also, there is one cruise ship line I won’t use now because in my opinion they don’t treat their employees well at all. Also, it is really tough work on any cruise line.
I get all the complaints people have against cruising but for us we have seen so much of the world in relative comfort. The trick is to plan trips around the shore excursions and what experiences you want to have. The ship is just the means to get to those experiences without having to hop on and off airplanes frequently.