Windstar Questions - St. Thomas

My wife and I are booked on the Dec. 10th Wind Spirit sailing RT from St. Thomas. This is our first Windstar cruise, and our documents arrived yesterday, but the embarkation directions are quite vague. Can someone share with me where the ship is actually moored - Charlotte Amalie ?

Does embarkation take place on the ship or at an office location ?

How strict is the 3pm embarkation time managed ?

Thanks for your help.

We will be joining you on this cruise. My cousin and her hubby from Dallas and my wife and I from Clear Lake Shores, Texas are all 50 something veteran cruisers but this will be our first for a small ship. Really looking forward to the cruise. We are going down early and staying at the Ritz Carlton on St Thomas for a couple nights before we sail. It has always been our tradition to get there a little early and slowly raise our blood alcohol level.

I am sure that you will all have a wonderful time. As you can see below, we are definitely sold on the small ships. You cannot get us on the large ones now. The cruise terminal is Crowne Bay Marina, which is a smaller cruise port and away from all the cruise congestion. We were there for the last new years eve sailing. We arrived at the port about 2pm. There are usually quite a few mega ships at the other ports, and transportation is best gotten early. They usually let you on as soon as they are ready, which was about 2:30pm on our cruise. 2 enterprising ladies decided that they needed to use the facilities... and were let on board after proper security checks. I also noted that those of us who arrived early did get to chat and this led to early friendships. A couple of things to bear in mind are not too much in the line of seating, as this was not at that time a covered port, and not a lot of shade.We enjoy ourselves so much that I have just booked the transatlantic yesterday. We love it. Have a blast!

When we sailed, they didn't let us on board (or even into the area right around the ship) until the time that was on our itinerary so there isn't any point in getting there early.

Once they are ready, they take the larger bags to bring on board and you go up the stairs to board the ship, then into the lounge where you fill out forms and get checked in.

Somewhere in your documents it should say which pier you need to go to. We embarked from the Crowne Bay Marina too. It is in the area of Charlotte Amalie - a few minutes ride from the "downtown" area.