Amy Lu's View

When I played the game Risk with my brother as a kid, he would sing a little original tune when he moved his armies from one continent to another: “Oh we’re going on a boat, and we’re never coming back..” (YES, I’m still shocked by this, but I DID play a game as a kid…and a long and involved strategy game at that!). 

It was such a catchy little ditty that it’s remained in my head my whole life. So no surprise, that song popped into my head as we planned our vacation aboard a boat. But I was surprised to hear Chad sing the song as we were telling someone about our vacation! I guess the song has not only lived in my head–Chad’s been treated to me singing it throughout the years. 

So we did go on a boat, but unlike the imaginary Risk soldiers of my childhood, we DID come back. We had to come back so that I could blog about our trip.

The boat we went on was not a typical cruise ship. We sailed on the Safari Quest, a 120 feet long, 29 feet wide vessel. The boat had 11 cabins and could hold up to 22 passengers (I think we had 20 passengers, including us). We also had 10 crew members. To state the obvious, it was small. 

I’ve never been on any type of cruise before, but I’m pretty sure this expedition was very different. It may seem a little corny that the name of the company is “UnCruise” but I think they lived up to their moniker. According to the Google, the average cruise ship is 1,000 feet long (we saw some in Seattle and they looked immense). The small size of our ship impacted everything about the experience–and for us, positively.

People have asked some great questions about what the boat was like. Here are some photos to try and capture the details.

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(Okay, I would have liked to have had an actual workout room and not just an old exercise bike that was on the top deck and exposed to wind, but I could almost convince myself that I burned sufficient calories everyday through hiking). 

Because the Safari Quest was so small, we could visit Islands without a port and use a skiff boat to get to them. We also got to know every other passenger, which was awesome AND entertaining (hopefully more about that later). 

We also did feel the boat rocking to an extent that I don’t think passengers on cruise ships  typically do–just on one occasion, but one memorable occasion. Okay, again, I don’t have anything else to compare it to, but the motion was so significant that I don’t think I could have easily stood up without hanging on to something. Luckily, I wasn’t trying to stand up, I was just trying to lie in bed as it was 4:00 in the morning. Our awesome captain planned this. She could tell we had “Rough seas ahead” (a John Price original song performed by our band Pigeons that was looping in my head) so planned for us to brave them at 4:00 in the morning–when hopefully we would all be in bed (and at least not during dinner). 

I wasn’t worried about seasickness–Chad is the one with the history of motion sickness. But I was a little anxious during our early morning adventure. It wasn’t so bad in and of itself, but, me being me, I kept worrying that it might get worse and I might need to throw up. It was also impossible to sleep through. And yes, alcohol consumption might have been a factor. 

The Safari Quest was only our home for a week, but I don’t think I’ll ever completely forget it. I don’t think I’ll ever entirely come back.