Living: Love Boats Rule the Waves

Cruises offer bargain vacations with sitcom expectations

He who would go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, had best steer clear of M.S. Sunward II. Of the 750-odd passengers who pack aboard the spruce white ship in Miami each week for a voyage to the Bahamas, few will later recall ever having seen seas, let alone a lonely sea. On Sunward II and most other cruise ships operating out of U.S. ports, sea and sky are props for a floating fantasy sitcom vacation that promises to be more naughty than nautical. Aboard Sunward, which steams only...

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