LAFFNVEGAS

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,

Beautiful web cam view of Wind Surf this afternoon. Next week I will actually be on board 😄

I forgot to add, the other thing we have been doing each Saturday is watching the St Maarten Web Cam, today the Wind Surf is behind NCL Sky and in front of Viking Sea. Sometimes the web Cam operator does follow the Wind Surf out zooming in and about 10 minutes after she has left port you can see the sails go up. Our Sail Away time is 7pm Atlantic time.

Thanks so much Everyone!!! We are extremely excited to be sailing Windstar Wind Surf a week from today. We only booked this cruise in late November when we learned from our good friend where he would be. Most cruises we tend to book several months out. But even though it's not been long it seems like forever and we are finally down to just a week from today. We do leave late Thursday night to fly to Miami, then connect to fly to St Maarten and arrive on Friday afternoon. I do plan to do a Live From and What's for Dinner, I will post here giving you all the link to Windstar Thread. After all, many of us long time HAL cruisers remember when Windstar was part of Holland America. My understanding there are still quite a few crew members working on Windstar that had transferred from HAL to Windstar and are still there. The Windstar CC board gets very little activity so we can at least make it busy for a week 😂

Hi Karen, I kind of doubt it will be the Marriott close to the pier, in the last several years it has been further out and most I have seen were Renaissance in Plantation.

It has been my experience in the past 12 months that it is taking HAL longer to give hotel options.They have been showing up between 5 and 7 months out instead of 9 to 10 months out. If you are flying into FLL or MIA getting HAL hotel is good because not only do the take you to the pier on embarkation but they will pick you up from either airport. For me it was great having a HAL Rep there and then we had a Private car transfer it was actually quite nice. The hotel we were placed in by HAL was Renaissance Fort Lauderdale - Plantation. We went out to dinner by getting a Lyft that only cost $5.00 and went to J. Alexander's that was near by. For breakfast there was a fairly good buffet with typical hotel breakfast food offered but the coffee was very good.We did not think breakfast was included we charged our buffet breakfast, a few days after we got home from the cruise the hotel refunded the charge to our credit card minus the amount I tipped So guess breakfast was included..

Excellent Web Cam viewing tonight and seeing the Sails going up.

Web Cam is giving us a nice zoom in of Wind Surf for Sail Away

I sent a message but did not think it went through but it did, or at least they just zoomed into Wind Surf, she looks pretty with the sun shining on her in the late afternoon sun.

Just call into Holland America normal Customer Service, they will still assist event hough you have a HAL PCC, they will apply it for you.

A beautiful day in Sint Maarten today, Wind Surf is alone today so doubtful the the Web Cam Operator will zoom in but will try to send them a message again.

I think it is more that you see very few kids and they do not really cater to kids.