Walking the Plank and Engine Trouble
Thoughts on an Alaskan Cruise, May/June 2025
We boarded the ship in Vancouver, B.C., three days ago, and made our first stop yesterday at Wrangell Island, Alaska. Our suite happened to overlook the dock, and we watched with some fascination as the port workers maneuvered the exit ramp into place.
Typically, on the ships we’ve sailed before, the personnel lower the ship’s gangplank. However, this is a relatively narrow dock, and the ship’s equipment would likely not fit properly. When we saw this, I jokingly said to my husband, “They are going to have us walk the plank, leap off, and swim to the island.”
That, of course, did not happen, as they raised the other ramp to meet it. When we left the ship, we encountered light rain and a heavy chill, at least for us Texans. Damp, but undeterred, we met our tour leader for a planned jet-boat excursion up a river to see some wildlife. There we descended an exceedingly steep, wet and somewhat treacherous metal ramp down to the river and got into the smaller boat.
After the routine safety instruction, we took off and . . . less than ten minutes later, the engine trouble became obvious. Continuing with the excursion was not an option, so we headed back, the captain full of apologies and a promise of refunds.
As we got off, I said to him, “Look, stuff happens, and frankly, for most of us, we’re just grateful we woke up alive and able to get out of bed this morning.”
Which brings me to my fellow passengers on this lovely Regent Seven Seas Explorer ship. Since school is out and Alaska is a popular family destination, I had anticipated a fair number of younger people on board. Well, we do have an adorable one-year-old passenger, surrounded by hovering first-time grandparents while his parents do the heavy lifting. I’ve also seen a smattering of passengers in their late forties to early sixties.
The rest of us? The usual geriatric generation, seeking to maximize the time we have left in our old age.
Most are mobile, but walkers and canes are fairly common. Our pace is slow, our pleasures high, we savor every moment of life we have left, knowing our runways are quite short now.
We make our fun with little things, stay grateful for warm and waterproof clothes, chat with the bartenders, enjoy perfectly cooked and elegantly served meals, aware that our clothes will all inevitably shrink before we disembark. Games, varied old-time music played at different venues, enrichment lectures, light-hearted gambling, and fun shows fill the day and evening.
Today, docking even as I write, we are heading into Juneau, where we are going to taste a variety of specialty Alaskan food and beverages. Yeah, the clothes are already shrinking. Thank goodness for spandex.
I've enjoyed reading about your travel experiences. Years ago friends of ours leased a home for eight weeks in a town about twenty miles south of Anchorage, and they invited us to visit them. We spent a week with them and loved all the wonderful places they took us. We got to experience a day cruise out of Anchorage where we saw a glacier and lots of interesting wildlife.