Postcard from….Tobago Cays

I have honestly never seen a more intense aquamarine, turquoise blue sea before. It is simply startling. We dragged ourselves from breakfast up to the deck to watch the ship anchor a few minutes before our scheduled 9am arrival time and the colour of the sea and beautiful tropical island backdrop, gleaming in the sun almost took our breath away. We hopped aboard the ship’s tender which took 20 or so of us to a nearby moored catamaran for a morning of snorkelling, swimming and island hopping. Duly kitted-out we were soon all in the water, heads down and paddling around watching the amazing tropical fish swimming around the coral below us. After a visit to a nearby storybook desert island for swimming, sitting, looking and/or even a little shopping under the palm trees we were taken to the beach near to where the Royal Clipper was anchored to join in with the ship’s pre-arranged beach barbecue. After a beautiful lunch the half-hourly tender service took us back to our ship. On our way I managed to snap a photo of the ship at anchor. Her sails are down but her impressive size, classic clipper lines, gleaming paintwork and startling colourful profile captured in this picture clearly shows why she creates such a stir everywhere she goes. The crew are forever cleaning, painting and tidying, keeping the rigging ship-shape, the teak gleaming, polished and scrubbed. Yesterday morning a number of the main deck sun beds had been cleared away to enable the sailmaker to lay out a sail which he was repairing using a giant sewing machine. There was quite a crowd of us watching him work. It’s a very romantic and comfortable ship and I hope the picture captures a little of our tropical sailing adventure and a little of the atmosphere. You can see our stateroom portholes on the starboard side and Nicola’s stateroom, next to ours, is on the left on the main deck. Trust this helps you to picture us, duly dressed up for dinner each evening, cocktails in hand, strolling arm-in-arm-in-arm around the deck.
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