KEY POINTS:
Anyone for a cruise? It is the stuff of public relations nightmares. P&O Cruises conduct a mid-winter advertising blitz, and then one of its ships sails into a vicious storm off the New Zealand coast, the subsequent damage forcing the cruise to be abandoned.
No amount of soft-sell
can compete with the "holiday from hell' headlines and the pictures of the buckled steel on the ship's hull.
The slick operation that it is, P&O sensibly did not even try. The passengers got a full refund and the incentive of a 25 per cent reduction if they rebooked on a future cruise.
But it could have been worse. Three months ago, P&O invited nine newspaper and radio journalists and their partners to sample a South Pacific cruise on the Pacific Star.
The prospect of a bunch of seasick reporters using the ship's internet cafe to file the grisly details of their stomach-churning voyage to their news organisations back home would have been the ultimate public relations disaster.
Fortunately for P&O, our 12-night cruise was three weeks earlier. The weather gods smiled on us. There were no headlines to write.
The last time I sailed the high seas in such fashion, Bobby Kennedy had just been assassinated, Keith Holyoake was prime minister, television came in single channel black and white, and a kilo of rump steak retailed for around $1.30.
It was 1968 - two years before the wide-body Boeing 747 went into commercial service and launched the modern era of cheap air travel.
Most families migrating from Britain to New Zealand still went by sea, a journey lasting more than five weeks, in our case aboard the Shaw Savill liner, the Southern Cross.
Apart from the big plus of five weeks with no school, for an impressionable 13-year-old, traversing the oceans to the other side of the world was one big adventure.
The memories are still vivid _ the ship squeezing through the locks of the Panama Canal, being banned from deck cricket for deliberately hitting the ball overboard, watching Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton tangle in The Taming of the Shrew in the ship's cinema, and tolerating our incompetent table waiter who disappeared after the Southern Cross docked in Suva.
Above all, though, there was the constant sense of being a willing hostage to the rhythm and routine of the ship as it ploughed through the seemingly endless expanse of ocean at a speed barely hitting 30km/h.
Forty years later, as the Pacific Star steams away from Auckland and towards Suva, that sense of pleasing entrapment - possibly the underlying reason why cruising is so seductive - is instantly rekindled.
Ask cruise veterans why they keep coming back for more and they say it is because a cruise is so relaxing. Once aboard ship, the weight of the 101 things normally on your mind starts to lift. There is absolutely nothing you can do about them.
Your mobile phone won't work at sea. You can still send emails, but going online costs nearly 80 cents a minute, so you won't be doing too much of that.
On a practical level, the attraction of cruises is that the ship is a floating hotel. Once unpacked, you are unpacked for good.
To get to the beach, you don't have to worry about flight connections, airport transfers and losing your luggage. The beach comes to you.
During our cruise, the Pacific Star anchored off four remote beaches - Dravuni Island and the Yasawa islands in Fiji and Champagne Bay and Mystery Island in Vanuatu.
The ship's motorised tenders were lowered into the water to carry passengers to shore where they could spend the day swimming, snorkelling, walking, buying souvenirs or simply lying in the sun.
The other big plus for cruise lovers is that your fare covers all meals - even afternoon tea - plus most of the entertainment on offer. And it is the quality of the food and entertainment which are crucial in determining passengers' verdicts on a cruise.
On the Southern Cross, beef consomme was on the menu night after night. On the Pacific Star, the menu changes completely every night.
In contrast to our waiter four decades back, the service in the Pacific Star's Bordeaux Restaurant is faultless. And, by necessity, precise.
Each night, 1000-plus passengers are wined and dined over four courses in two sittings. Timing is everything and the ship's galley works on getting the main course on the table within 20 minutes of a passenger's order being taken. Throughout the cruise, our waiter, Sam, and his largely Indonesian and Filipino assistants, did not put a fork wrong.
Unseen were the 55-strong team of cooks who sliced and diced their way through nearly three tonnes of chicken, two tonnes of beef, some 45,000 eggs, a tonne of lettuce and much, much more before the ship returned to Auckland.
Two chefs were designated solely to cooking meals for passengers with special dietary needs. As dinner wound up each night, Sam would quietly go through the following night's menu with the vegetarians at our table.
It is all part of the P&O ethic that staff never employ the word "no' when responding to passengers' requests. Just as staff are instructed to never walk past a passenger without greeting them with a cheery "good morning' or whatever.
It is all part of the package. The ship is actually more a floating resort than the aforesaid floating hotel, especially when it comes to the wealth of entertainment on offer.
On any particular day, the ship's daily newspaper lists dozens of activities, including health and fitness seminars, singing competitions, handy-hints corners, wine-tasting, cooking demonstrations, earring making, jackpot bingo, Sudoku challenges, an artists' corner, get-togethers for card players, shuffleboard tournaments, water volleyball, betting on throw-the-dice horse races, table tennis tournaments, cocktail making, golf putting, even a grandmothers' bragging party (bring your photos) and, our favourite, quiz sessions.
Come the evening, there is invariably a song and dance show featuring the ship's highly-polished professional entertainers, while elsewhere passengers can waltz, disco, karaoke or simply nurse a cocktail in the bars and lounges on the upper decks.
Failing that, you can catch a late night screening of a recent-release film. And, of course, there is always the casino.
Not surprisingly, lessons are offered in roulette and blackjack.
With various "theme nights' throughout the cruise, inevitably there is a Butlins-style British holiday camp feel to all this. One late night show - the "pub night' - included an audience participation routine with competing teams of male and female passengers carrying balloons between their legs and bursting them by sitting on the entertainment staff. The rest is best left to the imagination.
But before anyone shouts "Hi-de-hi' too loudly, the following night's show was "Liar, Liar' which served up a different challenge to the intellect.
Teams of passengers had to judge which of the three members of the entertainment staff on stage was giving the correct spiel on the meaning of a particular word. Easy it wasn't.
Nothing is compulsory, of course. You could spend the cruise in your cabin watching films or satellite channels and ordering room service for meals. Or sitting in the library reading a book or playing board games. Or running up a bar tab ...
Indeed, after several days at sea, it is possible to discern distinct categories of passenger, beyond their being dominantly elderly and late middle-aged.
The first group is the 'veterans' - 'I cruise therefore I am'. As old hands, they make little fuss. They know what to expect from a cruise.
The second category might be termed the 'group-ees'. Drawn together by friendship, profession, sport, hobby or whatever, they book on the cruise as a group. They are usually heard before they are seen due to the gales of laughter emanating from their midst. Nothing, absolutely nothing is going to stop them having a good time.
Then there are the 'greedies'. Most commonly seen at the breakfast and lunch buffets, they pile their plates with food seemingly hell-bent on eating the equivalent of their fare.
Invariably rude, but fortunately very much in the minority, they always have something to complain about. No one is going to stop them having a bad time, dammit.
Next come the 'newbies' - first-timers who shed their inhibitions and soon get right into the cruise culture.
Lastly, there are the 'hangers back'. Not keen on joining in - and every effort is made to include those travelling alone - they have realised that cruise holidays are not for them.
With everything laid on, ultimately a cruise is as good as what you make of it, both on board and while ashore.
If nothing particular takes your fancy on any day, however, you can always go aft to the Outback Bar, order your favourite tipple and watch the ship's wake slipping away towards the horizon, relaxing in the satisfaction that while you may be in the middle of nowhere, you are still going somewhere, but you are not going to get there very soon.
* John Armstrong cruised as guest of P&O.
