Cruise Lines

Delighted to see agents are getting behind my campaign for a better deal for singles through Cruisepricescompared.com, the deals at sea website just launched by Harley Van Straten.

Check out the Telegraph website and travel pages this weekend for more about singles and why cruising makes such a great holiday for lone travellers.

Who knows. We might just start to break down the walls of Jericho.

Delighted to see Cruiseprices is doing so well, by the way. Really seems to have taken off thanks to agents' support.

I am flying to Greenland tomorrow, joining a Hurtigruten cruise around the coast.

It seemed strange to be packing gloves and thick socks when it's warm but I know from experience that icebergs and glaciers are very cold places!

I'm told there is internet - and wifi - on board but not necessarily all the time. So I'll be blogging when I can, detailing my progress, in between the hikes and glacier watching.

Keep looking.

Just my luck. I'm on Ventura for two weeks and just when I get off there is a drama at sea.

The Cruise Critic website reports that the P&O Cruises' ship went to the rescue of an injured yachtsman on Sunday as it was sailing from Southampton to Malaga at the start of another two-week cruise.

OK, so the yachtsman probably didn't think it was fun but it must have been a great spectacle for the passengers after nearly two days of seeing nothing but well, sea, in the English Channel and Bay of Biscay.

He was landed and Malaga by the way and is said to be fine.

Thanks to Sean Halliday for getting in touch about his website featuring true stories about his life on a cruise ship. Have a look. It'll cheer up the day.

I can just see the poster now. Adam Goldstein, CEO and president of Royal Caribbean International, in the part of Kitchener, pointing a finger at agents and saying "Your cruiseline needs you".

Over dramatic? Maybe. But then the impending opening of bookings for Royal's 220,000-ton Oasis of the Seas promises to be dramatic too - especially for agents, whom associate vice-president and general manager UK and Ireland Jo Rzymowska expects to be snowed under with bookings.

The level of interest to date is phenomenal and we are anticipating a record-breaking day of bookings when the ship goes on sale for the first time on September 3.

Just to make sure things go according to plan, Royal is producing a stack of sales tools for agents, including window displays and A4 and A5 brochures showing cut-away images of the ship and pictures of Central Park, the Loft suites and Boardwalk.

These they will be with agents by September 3 - hopefully a bit before, so they have time to get them on display before it starts to snow - but a selection of marketing tools will also be available at the line's Cruising Power trade website.

I guess it was inevitable. Transocean Tours is introducing a fuel surcharge on all Marco Polo bookings.

The good news is that it doesn't come into effect until August 30 - so clients have an incentive to book now and save money - and it only applies to summer 2009 cruises on Marco Polo. This summer and winter 08/09 remain are supplement free.

Also, it is only £6 per person per night - that's £42 for a one-week cruise and £84 for two weeks, I know, but gratuities on Marco Polo are included in the cruise price so it's not as if passengers have to fork out twice.

I don't think anyone has too much to moan about, especially as six-night cruise prices start at just £499. That's quite a bargain by any standard.

Seatrade Insider reports that SeaDream Yacht Club is giving passengers the chance to buy the deck on selected cruises in 2009.

The cruiseline is one of the most aggressive in the industry when it comes to whole-ship charters and apparently very successful at getting individuals and companies with deep pockets to book out an entire vessel (they are small, each with room for 110 passengers).

I wonder if this is a sign of the economic times? Can't afford the whole ship for your birthday, anniversary or incentive? The why not have a deck instead?

Anyone who bites gets 21 staterooms on deck 3 and the Owners' Suite for free, which seems a fair exchange.

High waves are as difficult to video as skiing if this snippet on YouTube is anything to go by. There is a lot of spray but personally I find the sound more alarming than the waves.

Not that I am belittling what the passengers went through on P&O Cruises Australia's Pacific Sun when it hit bad weather on the way to New Zealand. It sounds like my idea of hell.

I thought I had it bad going over Drake's Passage to Antarctica last year. I couldn't stand but the bottle of water by my bed stood bolt upright throughout the whole two days!

P&O Cruises has really fired up the nation's cruisers with its latest smoking policy if the comments that have been flooding into the Cruise.co.uk website are anything to go by.

As from October, smoking will be banned on all inside public areas on Ventura, Oceana and Artemis. Smokers will still be able to light up on selected areas of open deck and on their balconies.

Smokers are shouting "not fair"; non-smokers are rejoicing with a holier-than-thou attitude which has then also irritated the smokers....and so it goes round and round.

Having been in cabins just vacated by smokers. I am all for banning smoking in staterooms, and personally I don't like it when people smoke on the balcony next to mine, but otherwise I have to say I'm with the smokers on this one (and I write as an ex-smoker of many years now).

It seems very unfair not to provide a lounge/pub, call it what you will, where smokers can puff away in the company of like-minded puffers. Non-smokers don't have to go in and always have plenty of other lounge areas to ang out in so they can't really compain.

It's called let and let live - although that's probably not the best expression where cigarettes are concerned!

I reckon what really matters is that people who don't like smoke can get away from it (so I wonder therefore whether the balcony and open deck is the best place, given the wind carries smoke, the smell, etc, but guess time will tell).

The last day of my cruise on Ventura and I'm black and blue after finally plucking up courage to have a go on the bungee trampoline.

I thought it was just a matter of bouncing up and down with bungees attached, but it's exhausting and my arms feel like they've been pulled from their sockets.

Great fun though!

Anyway, I can tell we're nearing old Blighty because it's raining, the fog horn has been blaring and suitcases have started to appear in the corridors. And we're still on the Bay of Biscay!

We have opted for what P&O Cruises rather oddly calls "self-help" disembarkation, which basically means we get off with our own luggage tomorrow morning.

That means there's no rush to get packed and, more to the point, we don't have to kick our heels around the ship tomorrow morning, with 3,000 other people also kicking their heels, waiting for the grey ticket we were originally given to be called at 10.15am, after having been asked to vacate our cabin at 8am.

I do understand they have to clean the cabins before the next passengers arrive, but out by 8am is a bit of an end-of-holiday shocker, especially as most people have only been staggering up to breakfast these last few days at sea at 10am.

But it's a shame that none of the lines has managed to come up with a more civilised way to get rid of the passengers who've paid so they can get the next lot on to spend, spend, spend.