Cruise: Caribbean : Sailing’s Peak Experience : A cruise on the Wind Spirit offers a high-tech taste of the good life under sail

We came to the Frangipani Hotel in search of old salts.

Bequia ( BECK-way ) was our first port of call on the Wind Spirit, a cruise liner-cum-sailing ship that follows the trade winds through the celebrated Caribbean sailing grounds called the Grenadines. A yachtsman’s Mecca where wooden whaling boats are still made by hand, the tiny island promised to be the kind of place where my husband John and I could slip off our deck shoes, order a rum punch dusted with fresh nutmeg and soak up tales of storm-tossed seas and moonlit coves--imagining, if only for an hour or two, that we’d just dropped the hook on our own 40-footer after a tumultuous Atlantic crossing.

As it turned out, the only other customers at the Frangipani’s seaside bar that sultry afternoon were two landlubbers from Florida--a St. Vincent-born songwriter and his wife, mourning the recent death of his father.

We commiserated over a few rounds of rum punch. Watched the sleek, four-masted Wind Spirit flanked by a flotilla of sloops from across the world glimmer in the setting sun behind Admiralty Bay. And remembered, guiltily but happily, that while the Floridians were heading home the next morning, our weeklong adventure on the bounding main had just begun.

Like several of our 142 fellow passengers on the Wind Spirit, my husband and I were no strangers to halyards and mizzenmasts. We’d chartered our own sailboats on previous weeklong vacations and relished the independence of calling at Caribbean islands that cruise ships the size of floating cities bypass. But for all the appeal of steering a small yacht to a snug anchorage, the notion of exploring those islands with 24-hour room service and an outdoor whirlpool--not to mention air conditioning and freshly laundered sheets on a queen-sized bed--was undeniably tantalizing.

The 7-year-old, 440-foot Wind Spirit proved to be a perfect compromise.

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Along with her identical sister ships, the Wind Star and Wind Song, the Wind Spirit is high-seas high-tech. When wind and seas cooperate (as they did every afternoon and evening on our midsummer journey), the vessel’s 21,500 square feet of computer-controlled sails unfurl from their 204-foot-high masts with a barely perceptible hum. And while strong swells that slapped the ship from behind on a few pre-dawn mornings prompted Southern Californians on board to compare the resulting shudders with last January’s earthquake, most of our trip was relatively smooth--thanks to stabilizers and electronically operated “anti-heeling tanks.”

Just as the Wind Spirit’s state-of-the-art sail power set it apart from smaller yachts and more authentic “tall ships” that take passengers on similar Caribbean routes, so did its on-board amenities.

No cramped bunks and hand-held showers here. Each of the Wind Spirit’s 75 outside cabins--which, at 185 square feet, were roomy by cruise-ship standards, let alone a sailboat’s--was paneled in gleaming teak, decorated in restful tones of blue, peach and beige, and equipped with a compact disc player and VCR. We made ample use of the latter, catching up on movies we’d missed from the ship’s library of more than 400 titles.

The food, served buffet-style in a glass-enclosed cafe at breakfast and lunch and in a wood-paneled dining room at night, was fresh, varied and sophisticated--from Indonesian curries (an apparent salute to the Wind Spirit’s previous--and short-lived--home base of Singapore) to a barbecue with grilled lamb chops and lobsters.

On several counts, however, the Wind Spirit had more in common with a creaking schooner than a glass-and-glitter cruise liner--which suited most of her passengers just fine. Two low-tech advantages: a sense of unforced conviviality and plenty of free time.

Our shipmates ranged in age from a honeymooning couple in their early 20s to an eightysomething gentleman with a bandaged foot who rarely left the poolside bar. (I thought of him every time I climbed the 50 steps from my bottom-deck cabin to the top deck, where breakfast and lunch were served.) Many had picked the Wind Spirit after a few stints on larger cruise ships, and all seemed to relish the informality it offered.

Absent were the bingo tournaments, photographers and annoying shipboard announcements that characterize many Caribbean cruises. Formal nights and Vegas-style floor shows were replaced by polo shirts and a local steel band. One blustery afternoon, the captain even encouraged would-be skippers to take a turn at the helm--though those ever-vigilant computers were standing by to keep the Wind Spirit on a steady keel.

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The unstructured pace of life on board continued on shore, when the ship dropped anchor each morning at a handful of eclectic, mostly off-the-beaten-wake islands: Bequia, the Tobago Cays, Carriacou, Grenada, Martinique and St. Lucia.

At Bequia, my husband and I joined about a dozen other scuba divers on the ship’s fold-down sports platform, where we boarded inflatable boats for a short ride to Devil’s Table, a shallow reef littered with turquoise parrotfish and delicate fan corals. (The Wind Spirit provides free snorkeling gear, water skis, windsurfers and a small sailboat; organized excursions for certified divers cost $60 per person and were offered five of our six days at sea.)

That afternoon, we poked through the quiet streets of Port Elizabeth, the island’s biggest town (pop. 4,800). We stopped in the well-stocked Bequia Bookshop, where Trinidad-born author V. S. Naipaul shared shelf space with books on sail repair. And we bargained with local craftsman Eli Peters for a meticulously carved, highly varnished replica of the schooners that still ply the surrounding waters in search of humpback whales.

On Carriacou ( CARRY-ah-coo ), a wind-blown, 13-square-mile dependency of Grenada, we joined four other passengers and paid $8 each for a taxi ride along a bone-jarring road, past hand-lettered signs urging “Don’t Be a Fool, Children Come to School” and advertising “License to Sell Spiritualist Liquour.” Highlight of the 1 1/2-hour tour: the pink-and-green-hued workshop of 78-year-old artist Canute Calliste, whose one-dimensional, childlike acrylic paintings have earned him attention as far away as New York. Canute wasn’t around the morning we stopped, but his genial grandson Mafaffa was--and 15 minutes of admiration and negotiation later, most of us departed with a bulky package under our arms.

The Wind Spirit’s call at Martinique, the largest and most populous of the islands on our itinerary, gave the ship’s compulsive shoppers a chance to scour the blissfully air-conditioned emporiums of Fort-de-France for perfumes and crystal. (I bought a bottle of Anais Anais and saved $10 over U.S. prices.) It also gave my husband a chance to show off his college French, when he persuaded the taxi driver leading our impromptu island tour to make a detour to a local grocery store for a few bars of French chocolate.

Our route took us up the cool, verdant flanks of Mont Pelee, the volcano that killed 29,000 people when it erupted above the town of Saint-Pierre on May 8, 1902, with a blast 40 times stronger than that at Hiroshima. At the eerily fascinating Musee Volcanologique, I was staring at a photograph of a prisoner who survived the disaster and went on to join the Barnum circus, when someone touched my arm. Henry Pierre-Charles, a tour guide and cousin of Saint-Pierre’s mayor, told me that tremors from Pelee had prompted some residents to move away over the past few years. He wasn’t among them--but confided, in a low voice, “I’m still afraid.”

The next afternoon, our last on board, we joined our shipmates on the pool deck as the ship powered into the teeth of a 20-knot breeze. Video cameras whirled and Instamatics clicked while St. Lucia’s volcanic, spire-like Pitons, half a mile high, loomed in our wake.

The view would have been just as glorious from the sailboat I saw trailing the Wind Spirit that day, spray dancing off its bow in the choppy seas. But as I reached for a piece of shrimp tempura and an almost-finished novel--and pictured a sodden, tired skipper at the sailboat’s helm--I couldn’t help congratulating myself that I’d booked passage on the Wind Spirit instead.

GUIDEBOOK

Blowing with the Wind Spirit

Cruise itineraries: Windstar Cruises’ 148-passenger Wind Spirit sails from Barbados Sundays through 1994, alternating weeklong itineraries. Southbound, calls at Bequia, Tobago Cays, Grenada, Carriacou, Martinique and St. Lucia. Northbound, stops at Bequia, Iles des Saintes, St. Martin, St. Barthelemy and St. Kitts. The ship then moves to St. Thomas, offering seven-day sailings to St. Croix, St. John, St. Barthelemy, Tortola, Virgin Gorda and Jost van Dyke through March 26, 1995.

The Wind Star sails from Barbados on the same alternating itineraries November-early April, 1995. The Wind Song offers weeklong trips through French Polynesia from Papeete, Tahiti.

What it costs: Wind Spirit and Wind Star seven-day Barbados sailings are $2,895 per person plus $840 round-trip air fare from Los Angeles, but cruise discounts of up to 39 percent are available.

For more information: Contact a travel agent or Windstar at (800) 258-7245

Other Caribbean sail/cruise options:

* Club Med’s 617-foot, 383-passenger Club Med I attracts a mix of European and North American cruisers, with shipboard activities conducted in both French and English. On-board facilities include two pools, two restaurants and a well-equipped fitness center. Club Med I’s Caribbean season runs late October to mid-April. Rates for six-, seven-, eight-, 11- and 15-day cruises out of Martinique range $1,750-$4,400 per person, double occupancy, plus air fare. Information: (800) CLUB-MED (258-2633).

* Three-year-old Star Clippers bills its Star Clipper and Star Flyer--with 36,000 square feet of sail each--as “the tallest tall ships in the world.” Like the Windstar ships, the byword on these 180-passenger, New Age clippers is “casual elegance”--including an open-seating policy in the dining room and a minimum of scheduled shipboard activities. Late October through early April, the Star Flyer sails weekly from St. Maarten; current per-person, double-occupancy rates range $1,045 (in an upper/lower inside cabin)-$2,545. The Star Clipper sails weekly from Antigua until January, when it repositions to Barbados. Fares are the same as the Star Flyer’s. Information: (800) 442-0551.

* Tall Ship Adventures’ Sir Francis Drake, a three-masted “tall ship” built in 1917, carries up to 34 guests in 14 cabins on seven-day cruises from St. Maarten and St. Thomas through mid-November, and on three-, four- or seven-day cruises from St. Thomas mid-November through mid-June. Cruise-only prices range $450 per person for an upper/lower bunk on a three-day cruise to $1,395 for seven days in the owner’s suite. Information: (800) 662-0090. * Windjammer Barefoot Cruises features six- and 13-day Caribbean cruises on six restored “tall ships.” Once the floating toys of folks like E. F. Hutton and Aristotle Onassis, the Windjammer ships now accommodate 65-128 passengers. Shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops are as formal as it gets on these vessels. Rates range from $650 per person plus air fare for six days in a six-person “bachelor/bachelorette” cabin on the Polynesia to $1,125 per person, plus air fare, for six days in the honeymoon suite on the Flying Cloud. Information: (800) 327-2601.