UKCruiseJeff

Lola, I now "turn-in" at roughly 4am. I cannot make sense of it but it improves slightly with some Absolut Vanilia. Sleep is a really weird thing. You have a greatest day. Jeff

Thanks WWfT - that is a great precis of pragmatism and I enjoyed it. Forgive me being a clutz with multi-quote but more and more technical stuff seems to defeat me. But you'll get my reply I'm sure to both of your bits I'm sure. I so wish I had chickens. My life would be a touch more complete. We get fresh eggs every few days or week or so and my wife's first decision is to dump whatever I had planned for supper but to have a lightly boiled egg and have some bread. I do not begrudge that. They are fresh Burford Browns. And she must what she wishes. 🙂 My own overall personal direction is to continue to simplify. If there is anything remotely like the words " ...... with a twist ...." then I develop a twitch and go back to simplicity. This is true of stuff like the orange cake and my bread. What I want is the taste of orange and almonds - so that is what I distil down to a cake. As you might detect I need not too much of an excuse to add the effluence of incohol to anything, but I'm trying to relearn. So I eat the cake and drink the incohol. I'm so pleased to read of your dough journey. I think that bread is sort of visceral and prime-evil. If you think about it, there has never been a moment in our worldly development that all of us need to find common ground. And if I had to pick one thin it is "our daily bread". Rice cements less people. So does potato. But "give us our daily bread" is the largest common denominator. If I was calling a peace summit for those in conflict I'd invite them for breakfast and give them some bread and talk about bread for a while. 99.999% of the world that make and eat bread have got on for thousands of years and probably none of them have ever looked at a bread recipe book. Because it is actually simple. the other 00.0001% (I think!) consult clever peoples recipes and mess it up. Hence my backward journey to first principles. Anyway. I'm always going backwards and it is what keeps me going forward. WWfT, do you actually make Tiramisu? How about some pictures of that and what else you make? Jeff

Phew …. ! All I’ll say is “Mayport Shrimp” Jeff

Good Grief ….. I must have inadvertently switch on Cooler invisible mode! 😬 Jeff

There cannot be anything worse than losing one’s identity and nothing sweeter than getting it back again. Jazz is sweet. 🙂 Jefff

Chundered chowder.

Where do they get their entertainers from? Maplin!

Lirio, Such a shame to hear about the cancellation. Reading what happened it sounds like you have had a narrow escape to what sounds like almost certain disappointment Those platters are impressive particularly with the cheese knife set and is that walnut loaf … with a touch of honey perhaps? Tonight’s supper was Mortadella and salad with mayo in focaccia panini and a mug of house white.

Mange tout mon cher petit pois.

Love your humour Fletch. Do keep it up. The humour that is. 😀

Thanks so much for the kind comments! She was right about 801. We had most of our meals there and in those days you could order what you wanted and everything was wonderful. It was like having your own boat without any of the palaver. Or cost. Or noisy neighbours! No one passes 801. For a couple of ports we were able to grab 802 which was vacant and had it set out boardroom style and in those days you could easily invite guests on board for the day. And to my surprise, no charges. SS considered it marketing. We had clients and friends who joined us in Barcelona, Monaco etc etc and SS put up a great seafood table and manned our private bar for us on each day and never has our client meetings gone so exceptionally well and so fluidly. I think the cruise more than paid for itself a few times over. Not many people have gone to work in 801/2. It certainly killed the idea of my own boat. To salivate, here is “wife on a shelf” and some more. Thanks again. Jeff

One thing I have learned, is that sometimes “Less is More” 😄 Jeff

Good afternoon Coolers, Today was chicken in white wine sauce with mash and peas! As an aside. My memory just sparked up. Did someone use to pop up in Cooler history and shout out “PEAS!” every time I posted a piccy of peas? 🤔 Anyway, in sympathy with Rojaan19 we have smaller portions for the dietary compromised. 😦 I’m proud of the parsley because a year or so back I was bored and we got heavily into hydroponics for fresh stuff and as a result we have been overtaken by stuff including parsley. Hydroponics is a wonderful thing. Today it was house wine. Jeff

Hi, The issue that might be factored into your thoughts is that an entrant into the uber-luxury game needs to be clear what it wishes to achieve. I’m so distant from the innards that I can only go on my instinct. It seems to me that the general upscale opportunity in cruising isn’t in expedition. I say this because it seems to me that the opportunity for even higher diems is low - it’s already quite high and the limiting factor of the size of ship is inevitably small’ish so there are no scale savings and the opportunity for quality improvement therefore is limited because there might not be so much revenue increase opportunity. It seems to me that the opportunity is the larger opportunity of mainstream ocean cruising. You mention upgraders and to me that implies something “a bit better”. I think the opportunity is in way more. I think it is for what is now currently routinely promised and not provided by anything I read about. It is where SS started. I mean genuinely exceptional in all respects. There is also a ship size sweetspot which seems to increase each year and I believe there is a growing pent-up demand for something better than what’s currently on offer. Your point seems if I have understood you predicated on the idea that a luxury line needs a high volume of defectors from cheaper lines. In fact it seems to me that it needs a much smaller number of people looking for exceptional product and aren’t too bothered about the cost within justifiable reason. For example our move to our first cruise with SS was my wife’s insistence that I should stop nagging about having my own cruiser but instead have a better experience and save money by booking 801 on Whisper for our first trial cruise. She was right. It was a stunning experience. Re expeditions. I’m lucky, I’m not nimble and the idea of getting off of a ship into a dingy so I can see some penguins seems a daft idea when I can stay at home and watch them on youtube with some cake and some booze and my own bed at nights. But I’m just a lethargic. Jeff

Hi Spins, You may recall as we've both been here for a while that we worked with Manfredi and SS for a while on this very topic ie CS and how to best "harvest" high-value relationships ie us punters for the longer-term. He was incredibly proud of his line and I wonder how many of the senior people that were appointed over time supported his visceral motivations. I was thrilled that we worked with them for a while. What I can say is that he was totally 100% emotionally committed to expanding and growing his line whilst preserving exceptional quality. To remind you with the contemporary context, this was at a time when the only viable competitor too SS's first few ships was SB, but they didn't have balconies. I think in those days it was Wind, Cloud, Whisper and Shadow but my memory isn't what it was. These were great days to be an SS customer. I saw the long-term opportunity as an open goal. I believed then that SS had an extraordinary opportunity. However there is a difference in the way that you can grow. You can grow organically and grow in line with your customer growth ie only building ships when you believe you can fill them at a viable diem and therefore can guarantee you can afford to protect the high level of quality you need. This is the best way of growing ie in sync with your growing customer base and therefore gives you the best long-term shot IMHO. It is slower but self-sustaining. Or you can make your aspiration for say 11 ships as quickly as possible being your guiding impetus. This implies you running after the volume you need to underpin the growth which inevitably (and in my view invariably) compromises quality. It has always seemed to me that this inevitably means moving down market. The problem is that as you crawl down market to sustain your debt-base and you inevitably increasingly disappoint and lose your existing loyal customer base. This is where I think following growth overly aggressively will almost always compromise your long-term goals. I remember very clearly expressing it at the time as being. "You have a choice. You can grow aggressively and force yourself to compete below the clouds with all the lower cost lines to steal some of their volume or you can go above the clouds where there is currently no competition and grow more slowly but more certainly - but with the advantage of little or no competition". It was this exact philosophy that won us the relationship. It was clearly accelerated growth rather than organic growth that was the strategy that was pursued and you and I and others have therefore been left as orphans and deprived of somewhere to spend our hard-earned cash. I remain sadly and pathetically upset that such an enormous opportunity has still yet to be grasped permanently by any line. But what do I know. Jeff