Queen Mary 2 Maiden Voyage - 22 January 2004

Bridgetown was quiet: just one fireboat active, a little ferryboat passing by bringing in office workers and stall vendors.

On our port side, the newly-arrested European Vision of Festival Cruises. The twin arrivals of bankruptcy and the world's largest ocean liner made for an interesting day in the press.

Vision was not dark, not abandoned; at this point, according to newspaper accounts, passengers were still waiting to get off pending arrangements to fly home. Their cruise has become a crossing, a one-way run to a port they had wanted to see in transit, as we were about to see it, with the glorious comfort of our ship to come back to.

Costa Classica, already docked, a favorite of cabinmates. It is exciting for me to look on any new ship, even one as oddly put together externally as this one. Classica is distinguished for her interior design, a completely different approach to passenger space than the Cunarder we glide in on.

A dockside marking for the pilot? Or crew graffiti from QM2's young aunt during a Bridgetown call?

Overnight storage arrangements for the deck chair pads not yet worked out fully on this maiden run, the Garden Lounge will do for storage, as long as they are cleared well before tea time.

Radisson Cruises' Seven Seas Navigator is last in, passing us on our port side. An "all-outside" ship, Navigator represents a strategy of giving 90 percent of passengers the privilege of a private balcony. For Queen Mary 2 Stephen Payne told us, Micky Arison required seven decks of verandahs, and Payne found a way to deliver eight.

Her public deck deserted as the ship's complement looks on from private balconies, Seven Seas Navigator carries just under 500 passengers.

The Queen attracts notice herself.

This day Charles had proposed a beach across the island.

From the taxi van we hired to go across the island we got another look at European Vision. A gargantuan floating block of a ship, she is perhaps not stale, but flat definitely, and (for Festival) unprofitable.

After a great (and unphotographed) day at one of the very best beaches I've ever been at, the towering side of Queen Mary 2 is a welcoming sight.