Low Prices On The High Seas When Cruise Ships Reposition Between Seasons, Fares Plummet

Ships are creatures of the sea. They and all their occupants flourish under way rather than dawdling at a hot pier. Better than moseying from one Caribbean or Mexican port to another is the exhilaration of setting out across an ocean.

There was a time when this was commonplace - the only way people could cross oceans. Today, the charm of that era of crossings can be recaptured. It’s called a repositioning voyage.

For the cruise industry, October and April are the most restless months. These are repositioning times, when dozens of ships sail from one seasonal market to another. Savvy passengers sail with them, profiting from cheaper fares while relishing blissful days at sea.

In the fall, when Alaskan, Baltic and Mediterranean waters chill out, vessels migrate, abandoning summer venues for the warm waters of the Caribbean, the Panama Canal, South America or the South Pacific.

Come springtime, the direction of repositioning reverses and those same waters assume the guise of maritime bird sanctuaries. From every point of the compass, flocks of white cruise ships circle and land to resume their summer feeding grounds.

While they are repositioning, cruise ships revert to the role of liner, embarking passengers for what is called a line voyage, sailing from Port A to Port B, but not returning to Port A. In so doing, vessels adopt a purposeful, passenger-pleasing mission, achieving a distant destination rather than drifting idly among neighboring ports.

The simplest and most efficient repositioning crossing would be eight consecutive days at sea from, let us say, New York to Southampton, plodding in the swift wake of the last express ocean liner in existence, Queen Elizabeth 2.

But national preferences are at work here. Most British passengers prefer straightforward line voyages, but their American shipmates would rather pause en route. So, to suit the tastes of their largely American clientele, cruise lines spice up repositionings with a seasoning of ports, serving up enchanting, long-range cruises.

A typical case in point: When Cunard’s Royal Viking Sun sailed from Florida to the Roman port of Civitavecchia this spring, she alighted momentarily on two mid-Atlantic stepping stones, Bermuda and Madeira. Subsequently, she called at two additional Spanish ports - Malaga and Alicante - before achieving her final Roman destination.

Here aboard the Royal Princess, we are also sailing for Rome, but via a more northerly itinerary: Due east from New York to the Azores with Lisbon and Portimao, Portugal; Gibraltar; Barcelona, Spain; Cannes, France; and Livorno, Italy, lying ahead.

For beginning passengers, consecutive days at sea may seem daunting. Those who have cut their cruising teeth in the Caribbean return home with a collection of ports hanging like scalps from their belt, conditioned to three, four or sometimes five stops a week.

But half their cruise has been spent immobilized in port. Vessels sailing out of Miami on three- and four-day cruises fare worse, achieving their ports almost surreptitiously - overnight. Come the dawn, they are already fast alongside the dock.

This heavy reliance on port days rather than sea days sells shipboard life short. Disembarking its passengers day after day disrupts a ship’s even tenor, starting at the top. The captain must be up before dawn, ready to greet the pilot on the bridge and bring his ship safely to its pier. Hotel managers (the chief pursers) must organize earlier breakfasts, receive shore officials and dispatch shore excursions. Coping with tenders, provisioning, watering and bunkering (taking on fuel) preoccupy engineers, shop staff and bosun. The staff captain worries about crew boat drills and ongoing maintenance. And rust-chipping and repainting consume the day, the tap-tap-tap of hammer on steel echoing throughout the deserted ship.

Not only nearly deserted, but also inert and apparently forsaken, the vessel endures a kind of twilight sleep. Pool and public rooms are empty, and open-seating lunches shared with alien tablemates and stewards seem more perfunctory than pleasurable.

Only after tour buses have lumbered back onto the pier and exhausted passengers regained their rightful turf can the vessel shrug off her moorings and slip (gratefully, I always think) back to sea.

Consider the enviable alternative: a repositioning, with glorious sea day after sea day. Life aboard a vessel bound for a distant continent is quite different. Traditional seagoing resonances persist: An unceasing but lulling engine thrum underfoot, sea light dancing on cabin ceilings, the regular lift and fall of the bow and the evocative span of days with nothing to disrupt surrounding hemispheres of sea and sky.

As the voyage progresses, passengers get to know their ship as intimately as the ship’s company gets to know one another. All are drawn together by a mutual sense that we - passengers, crew and vessel - are going somewhere.

This is what most distinguishes crossing from cruising: A sense of urgent purpose pervades the entire ship. Every shiver or lurch of hull betrays that the steel thoroughbred we ride has the figurative oceanic bit between her teeth and is cantering effortlessly toward a finishing post far over the horizon.

The surest test of a crossing’s insidious delight is that few know what day it is, even fewer the date. Days blend one into the other, a seamless progression of dawns and dusks; of promenade deck circuits and evening entertainment; of rubbers of bridge and quizzes; of books in deck chairs and, always, languid, festive meals. Everyone - crew and passengers alike - is on board where they belong, fulfilling their historic roles.

Another sign that you are sailing on a repositioning cruise occurs on the masthead. As the ship sails from one port to another you will see various flags flown there. For example, as we crossed from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean, the Royal Princess flew the national flag of Gibraltar as well as the houseflags of Princess Cruises and its owner, the Peninsula & Oriental Line.

European crewmen particularly enjoy repositioning crossings because they sometimes enjoy visits, however brief, with their families en route. Guido Daniel is a Portuguese dining room waiter aboard Royal Princess. When we called at Portimao on Portugal’s southern coast, his wife Idalia and enchanting 5-year-old daughter Sophia came on board for a keenly anticipated visit. Guido had not seen his daughter for three months and the Daniel family cherished that bonus repositioning reunion.

To be honest, crossings are not always smooth; sometimes, as Kipling described conditions aboard the Mauretania: “The ship goes wop with a wiggle in between.” But two modern refinements - one mechanical and the other medicinal, neither available on the Mauretania - have reduced the chances of seasickness to near zero.

As part of its stability arsenal, every modern cruise ship is outfitted with two stabilizers recessed within the hull below the waterline. Deployed on command from the bridge, they extend outboard like the lower pectoral fins of a whale. Their computer brain anticipates potential rocking motion and, by twisting the fins in the appropriate direction, quell the roll almost before it begins.

Sea sickness’s internal cureall is dimenhydrinate, a medicinal miracle that began life just after World War II as an experimental antihistamine. One participant in a blind testing discovered that she no longer felt seasick on her homeward trolley ride after taking the medication, and Dramamine, seasickness’s grand specific, had accidentally but providentially arrived.

Regardless of calm seas or rough, what a way to go, immersed in the slow, steady pace of life at sea, of days filled with but one purpose: tranquillity.

In two words, the atmosphere on board a repositioning vessel is “blessedly peaceful.” The cruise lines’ abbreviation for “passengers” is “pax”; it is also, significantly, the Latin word for peace.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO Repositioning fares vary according to line, but all are advantageous. The best bargain seems to be aboard Windstar vessels. Caribbean per diem per person is $485 and European $599, but the cost for trans-Atlantic days in between shrinks to an astonishing $207. Fares aboard Royal Princess diminish from $311 Caribbean and $349 Mediterranean to a manageable mid-ocean daily rate of only $218. Repositioning passage aboard luxurious Seabourn Pride is only $606 a day as opposed to a steep Mediterranean daily tariff of $946. Presumably, the only reason for these dramatic savings is that repositioning crossings are not popular or insufficiently publicized, and the cruise line is faced with carrying passengers at reduced rates or repositioning empty, a dead loss. When Crystal Symphony first crossed from Vancouver to Yokohama in 1995, only 371 passengers were on board, well below the vessel’s 1,000-plus capacity. Shrewd cruise shoppers who survey the field carefully will find bargain passages, especially since more cruise lines are targeting Mediterranean and Far Eastern summer itineraries. That Royal Caribbean Cruise Line recently changed its name to Royal Caribbean International tells the tale: With more repositioning crossings scheduled each year, the entire world can become your shipboard oyster. For those seeking remoter horizons aboard smaller vessels, exotic repositionings beckon. Three companies offer westbound April sailings from Bombay to the Mediterranean, including passage through the other great canal at Suez. Completing those voyages last spring was a vessel each from Seabourn Cruises, Silversea Cruises and Radisson Seven Seas. Entering the eastern Mediterranean, they might easily have encountered a canvas-assisted Windstar vessel repositioning eastward from Rome or one of Royal Olympic’s vessels steaming from Florida to take up station in Piraeus. For more information on repositioning cruises, a travel agent who specializes in cruises or Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), Suite 1407, 500 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10110; 212-921-0066; www.cruising.org.