LAFFNVEGAS

Lunch at the Veranda, I did buffet so I could have a bit of salad and fish. Tom ordered a burger. After this we are going to take the tenders into Nevis. I had a great massage and booked a facial and massage for the last day. This evening is the Captain’s Toast. @HaveDogWillTravel I will go get pictures now of the water sport landing and will post later.

Thought you would like to see some pictures of the Daily Program this is yesterday’s and todays and some more pictures around the ship. Sorry I keep getting an error for yesterday’s front page of the Daily program.

Thanks for the great web cam pics of our sail away.

Enjoyed breakfast at the Veranda. Floating out near us is Club Med 2 which was originally the sister ship to Wind Surf.

Good Morning from Wind Surf, it is a beautiful sunny day here in Nevis. Anchor is dropped. Today’s plan is to first go up and get a coffee at Yacht Club, then breakfast at Veranda. Then I have a massage at 11. Then in the after we get off a bit in Charlestown, not sure yet on dinner will keep everyone posted.😁

Good Evening from Wind Surf, sorry for being Missing in Action but it’s been an extremely busy day and just did not have time. thanks so very much for capturing Sail Away we were on the aft in Compass Rose for most of it but did see it . The winds are perfect tonight so we are under full sail power with no engines running. The movement for us is a lot like an aft stateroom. It was a very good first day and yes I think Windstar is a good fit for Tom and I. Tonight after having wine with James we went to Stella Bistro a French restaurant, hopefully you can read the menus. Sorry I am so late this evening. With What’s for dinner. There was just lots of good wine, food and conversation. I will write more tomorrow when I don’t have wine fog 😉 Hopefully you can read the menus. Tonight I did not pictures ones meals The pics were what I ate. we closed Stella and were the only ones there. Over all a great first day, so good to see our good friend James Deering.

We just enjoyed a nice buffet breakfast at the Infinity Restaurant that was as included with the hotel through Windstar. An absolutely beautiful view for breakfast

Good morning!!! Happy to see that Wind Surf is there waiting for us this morning.

Good Morning from St Maarten. It’s cruising day and what an amazing view we woke to. while the hotel itself is not overly close and is older, the view and its charm is amazing. Kind of reminds me of a way of the Royal Kona Resort in Kona Hawaii.

Greeting from Oyster Bay Resort in St Maarten , Roy you are correct we had over a 7 hour delay. I lost count on how many delayed departure times we had. Everyone cheered when we took off and finally landed in St Maarten. They basically kept Immigration open for us while the rest of the airport was closed. The flight over all went smooth, had to cancel our dinner reservations through Open Table for the Infinity Restaurant. Instead of having steak and Caribbean Lobster I had Baileys and Coffee and 2 packages of Biscoff cookies, love to dunk them in the coffee. By the time we checked in and a porter took us by golf cart to our room every thing was closed. Oh well I am sure we will more than make up for it on Wind Surf. We do have a Bay Water View room that we will see more of in the morning but the sound of the waves lapping the shore is quite nice. This hotel through Windstar also includes breakfast that is served from 7 to 10. Check out must be done by 10 am they they stated the bus to take us to the ship will not be till 1pm. I am going to call it a day since we got up about 7:30 pacific time on Thursday and have basic not slept yet except for maybe a few short cat naps 😭

Good Afternoon from…… Miami International Airport. Yes we are still here with more time updates of delay than I have ever received. The latest is our 8:35 am flight to now leaving at 2:45pm and not arriving till 6:38. I have canceled dinner reservations. We are just eating unhealthy junk food on American Airlines Lounge 😂 Just yet another reason to arrive at the very least a day before one’s cruise. It has definitely been a very long day since we left for the airport at 9pm last night. I will keep you all updated.

With all travel, one must be prepared for delays. We are still in Miami. We were to be boarding 15 minutes ago on this delay. The Captain called for Maintenance with a problem, then they stated they needed to do an aircraft swap because this plane was not ok to fly over water. so we are waiting a bit longer. Text that just came through said fly will now leave at 11:13. Only 2.5 hours delay 😃

Good morning from the American Admirals Club lounge at D30 at Miami International Airport. It is a beautiful sunny morning. We arrived at 7:14 East Coast time and found that our flight to St Maarten that was to leave at 8:35am it is now not going out till 10:15 which will get us into St Maarten at 2:35. I was originally concerned we would not have a chance to have something to eat. We are in First Class for all segments except from MIA/SXM. This plane only has 8 first class seats compared to the usual 16. We are in premium main cabin and waitlisted for free upgrade but doubt it will happen. These lounges are always packed. We were just in this Lounge last on December 17th after we disembarked HAL Nieuw Statendam cruise. But it does make it nice to relax, get a bite to eat and relax.

Good Evening from Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. Surprised how busy the airport is this late at night. I have Lounge access through a credit card so we are enjoying that but what was surprising is how packed this lounge is. We usually use it very early in the morning. We are on American to MIA Priority Boarding Group one. Hoping to get a few hour of sleep before we get to MIA. I have to laugh for the past 4 hours I have had 5 notifications of gate changes either our flight arriving in MIA or the gate we leave out of for SXM. I will say good night for now and hopefully will have time to report in when we arrive in MIA.

Nancy, I am so sorry to hear this and from your first email it does in fact sound like it is being Chartered but that second email for the other voyage about maintenance is very confusing. Hopefully more info can come out and there might be another option with Windstar. I agree it all seems strange especially with making the big change and celebrating the Breeze in Tahiti recently.

Greetings HAL cruisers, we are about to embark on something very new to Tom and I. I thought many of you may be very interest in following our cruising on Windstar Sailing Yacht Wind Surf. Many long time Holland America Cruisers remember when Windstar Cruises was part of Holland America. To give you a bit of history for those that may be fairly new to Holland America in 1987 Holland America purchase 50% of Windstar Sail Cruises then in 1988 purchased the remaining 50% making Windstar Cruise part of Holland America. With Officers and Crew working on both lines. In 1989 Holland America became a subsidiary of Carnival Corp bringing Windstar with it. The ship we will be sailing on is Wind Surf which is the largest Sailing Yacht in the World. It is just 15k tons, it average close to 350 passengers per sailing. Interestingly enough of the 6 Windstar ships 3 sailing ships and 3 Motor Yachts that were formally Seabourn ships that were also part of Holland America. The Wind Surf is the largest of the 6 although the Motor Yachts have been stretched in recent years. Below is a bit of history from Wikipedia that give a bit more history. The option to continue building the Wind Surf and the Wind Saga was passed up by HAL. With assistance from the French Government these two larger ships were built for Club Med as Club Med I and Club Med II, with HAL / Carnival retaining rights of first refusal for purchase. A few years later, HAL / Carnival planned to buy the Club Med I and the Club Med II with permission. However, Windstar cruises was unable to purchase the ships and rename them to Wind Surf and the Wind Saga because they had only enough money to purchase one ship. So in 1998, Windstar acquired the sail cruiser Club Med I from Club Med Cruises, and rechristened her to her original name Wind Surf. In March 2007, Carnival sold Windstar to Ambassadors International for $100 million.[5] On April 1, 2011, Windstar's parent company Ambassadors International filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.[6] A bankruptcy court in Delaware held a two-day auction and Anschutz Corporation won Windstar Cruises with a bid of $39 million. Subsidiary Xanterra Travel Collection is now the parent company. I plan to continue my What's for Dinner so look forward to seeing more activity on the Windstar board.Plus I will be doing lots of comparisons to cruising Holland America.

Greetings Fellow Cruisers, Welcome to My Live Report of our Travels to St Maarten to Board Wind Surf. My husband Tom and I are frequent cruisers. We started cruising in March 2002 with our first ship Royal Caribbean Monarch of the Seas sailing Western Caribbean. The following year April 2003 we sailed in the Inaugural year on the Holland America Zuiderdam. At that time Windstar Cruises was fully owned by Holland America under the Carnival umbrella. We became hooked on cruising and in the early years booked nothing but Holland America, in that time we became good friends with many Crew and Officers. In 2008 I had a bit of a career change that allowed me to start cruising other cruise lines. We also enjoyed Norwegian Cruise Lines, Princess and Celebrity but always went back home to Holland America. In March of 2007 Holland America/Carnival Corp sold Windstar, for several years after that I know that Windstar had some financial rough seas till they became part of Xanterra Travel Collection and slowly became the small boutique cruise line it is today. In those early years I had friends that sailed Windstar as well of heard and knew of crew that were transferred over to Windstar from Holland America so I always knew that we would feel right at home with the crew with their ties to Holland America. The question was would we like the very small Sailing Yachts? Well, we are older now, our enjoyment from cruising has changed over the year. Tom has been retired for several years and for the past 10 years I had been working 2 jobs one of which was the Auto Finance Industry but I retired from that in August so now just working my retirement job that allows me to travel. So this next week will give the answer to that question. I welcome you all to follow along for our first cruise with Windstar. My writing style is a bit like a journal or diary. I more than likely will post a few times during the day and tell you what we are doing at that time. I like to play What's for Dinner?, posting copies of the menus and letting you decide and add what you might want to order from the menu. Because we cruise fairly frequently with Holland America I have been doing this on the Cruise Critic Holland America Board, many from the HAL Board I am sure will be joining all of you to follow along. Plus since Windstar is really a strong part of Holland America History many who are long time HAL cruisers even before me remember Windstar fondly. You may ask why did we decide to sail Windstar? , well I will reveal that later but let's just say we have been wanting to since 2018. Check back frequently, later tonight I will take you with us as we fly out of Harry Reid Internal Airport in Las Vegas on a Red Eye to Miami.

Bon Voyage!!! Enjoy!!

This Saturday we board Wind Surf and we have signed up to do this excursion, we will be doing it this coming Monday. I plan to be reporting daily doing a Live from The Wind Surf here on CC, so stay tune. I will start reporting Thursday night journaling our journey to St Maarten, staying at the hotel provided by Windstar.

Sails are going up, what a great Sail Away!! Cannot wait till next week this time.

Sails are going up on the Wind Surf

You are correct 😉 Yes it will be great we have not sailed with him since Volendam in 2016 but last saw him in October 2017 when we spent time in Japan and got to see he and his wife.

Wind Surf is on the move,, On time departure tonight

We have a good friend that was formerly a Hotel Manager several years ago with HAL that we have stayed in closed contact with for 18 years, he is the Hotel Manager on board. We have wanted to sail with him again but timing and other cruises we had booked got in the way. I did not want to book far out for fear he would not be on the ship. Windstar recently moved him to this ship and within days of him telling us we decided to book it. Timing was right between other cruises we have booked and now that I am not working 2 jobs just the one that I have more freedom to travel this was the perfect time.

For those that want to see and get an idea of the size of Wind Surf, here is a web cam shot taken just a minute ago. she is behind Viking Sea that is only 48,000 tons and about 900 passengers so half the size of a Signature Class/Vista Class ship. Wind Surf is 15,000 tons and based on double occupancy holds about 342 passengers,