Anchors Aweigh!

Louis and Doris, our bags, our Sandpoint friends Ruth and Doug (who are joining us for the first segment of our world cruise) are now all aboard and unpacked, fed and rested and docked for a day trip to Ensenada, Mexico.

You, too, can ride Insignia around the world (ATW, as they call the cruise onboard) through the internet magic of CruiseMapper. Where are we as you read? We should be just a click away.

So Far, So Good

Not even 48 hours onboard, it is too early to say much beyond “so far so good.” We can report that all of the brilliantly packed bags were delivered to our cabin as promised, and the unpacked ones fit under the bed exactly as mapped out with painter’s tape on our living room floor in San Diego. (Which, let the record show, was actually Louis’s idea.) Everything on board has been at least as good as advertised, if not better.

Best experience of the first two days was our nighttime, rain-streaked departure from San Francisco’s Embarcadero with the ship’s pool deck at our feet and Coit Tower glowing on the horizon.

The sight of the stalwart little tugboat towing us from the dock with the Bay Bridge sparkling in the background while the city lights faded and the hills shrank over the stern was magical.

Our farewell view of the Golden Gate Bridge as we at last sailed into the black night sea will not be soon forgotten. 

For Those Who Wonder

For inquiring minds of the maritime kind (you know who you are!), Insignia measures 593.7 feet (180.45 meters) long and 83.5 feet (25.46 meters) wide. She holds 317 outside cabins and 25 inside (viewless) ones. The defunct Renaissance cruise line built the ship in 1998 in St. Nazaire, France, at a cost of $200 million. She was completely remodeled (“re-inspired” in Oceancia Cruise talk) in 2018.

The ship carries up to 684 passengers who sleep, eat and play on nine passenger decks. The top speed of her two diesel electric motors and four Warsila engines (whatever a Warsila engine might be) is 18 knots/hour.

Insignia’s crew numbers about 400, or almost two crew members for every three passengers, which is not remotely like we are staffed at home. She flies under the Marshall Islands flag. Just talking to the crew is a trip around the world. Her captain is Croatian, her head chef French, her executive concierge Chilean. Already, we have met crew from Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Scotland, Serbia, the Philippines and many more.

Before making the acquaintance of these new companions, we said goodbye to a handful of familiar friends who joined us at the Broadway Pier in San Diego to see the Insignia at a port call only 10 minutes from our home. Two hours later, we were at the airport to fly to our rendezvous in San Francisco. The next time we saw our home for the next 180 days, we were on a gangplank, at last ready to set sail.

Conditions first day at sea: clear skies, winds gusting to 35 knots, waves cresting at 15 feet. 

Coming Soon!

What Worries Us