condition of St. Maarten for Wind Surf cruise in December

I just put down a deposit for the Wind Surf Dec. 8 cruise RT from St. Maarten. I plan to fly in one day earlier. I started looking at possible hotels to book and am seeing the majority are still closed due to hurricane damage. There are ver few places to stay in St. Maarten now, almost nothing is open that is at $100 a night.

Since Windstar decided to commit to sailing from St. Maarten again they must assume everything will be in place and operating by November. But I am not so sure. I hesitate to buy a plane ticket to SXM only to have Windstar say St. Maarten cruise port isn't ready and move the cruises to Barbados like they did this year.

What do you all think about the odds of St. Maarten being good to go for this year's winter Caribbean cruise season?

We are also in a quandary about this as we will be on the yacht until 1st December when we disembark in St Maarten.

Or will we?

I can get what I think is a decent price on St Maarten to Orlando via Newark on United of $214 each one way but its not changeable and non refundable etc etc.

And a changeable or refundable ticket is way more.

And if we leave it the price will go up.

What to do?

Can't you fly direct from St. Maarten to Orlando? You will be adding another 6 or 7 hours to your travel by flying by way of Newark. Not to mention the terrible on-time record Newark airport has.

Can't you fly direct from St. Maarten to Orlando? You will be adding another 6 or 7 hours to your travel by flying by way of Newark. Not to mention the terrible on-time record Newark airport has.

Actually that was not the question - but to answer you I looked on a well known flight booking site and found 19 flights with one stop and 32 with two or more stops.

And none on that date with no stops. It surprised me as well.

Anyway on this flight we will be going home after the voyage so we really don't care if it goes a bit wrong, we will just be later home than anticipated.

And most of the other flights on offer are double the cost or more and really aren't much better in overall time.

The question is - will Wind Surf actually arrive in St Maarten or will we instead go to Barbados where our flight tickets home will be useless and non refundable.

Windstar might alter their Caribbean home port like they did this year.

It's over seven months until November. The port was reopened in October 2017. There are hotel rooms available.

http://www.travelweekly.com/Caribbean-Travel/Caribbean-islands-affected-by-hurricanes-mapped

http://www.caribbeanforeveryone.com/2017/10/10/st-maarten/

We stopped in St. Maarten on a cruise in February; lots of stuff had re-opened, and sounds like more and more each day. They are working hard to get things back bit by bit.

Thanks for the advice, we just booked the last 2 tickets at the quoted price and on checking back one minute later the next 6 seats on that flight out of St Maarten have gone up $30 each.

Seems like its crazy having to book 8 months out to get a decent cost on a flight.

I'm sure there is a huge correlation between cruise departures on a particular day and airline tickets going up.

Even a small ship like Wind Surf is more than a planes capacity.

When we flew into Barbados this year from Ft Lauderdale on 17th February nearly half the plane was Windstar passengers, most of the rest were Seaborn passengers and the rest were a scattering of noncruise folk.

I am limited to flying on AA from Miami as I have credit vouchers with AA I need to use. These flights will be non refundable once I book the. There is only 1 AA flight a day in and out of SXM. The airport is open but is housed in a tent. There are no plans to reopen the actual airport building. The AA flight arrives at 4:00pm so I would need a hotel for 1 night. It's hard to tell which hotels are actually open for business when looking at web sites like hotels.com and booking.com as both will make a reservation for a place that may or may not be open by December.

I suppose I can wait until final payment is due to make the decision whether to cancel or not, and hold off until then to get the airline tickets. The AA flights are very expensive no matter how far in advance they are booked. The MIA-SXM-MIA route is never sold at a discount. By October 8 it should be more obvious the condition of St. Maarten for Wind Star cruises.

Hi susiesan, I belong to a few SXM FB pages and from what I've seen and stories I've read from recent visitors, the recovery has been nothing short of remarkable. Yes there is still work to do, but there are quite a few hotels open with more planning to open over the coming months.

We are booked for the NYE sailing from St. Maarten and cannot wait to go back. Flying in a day or two early from California and staying a few days after. Pre-cruise we are booked at Holland House and post-cruise we are booked at Mary's Boon. Anytime during the winter months, which is considered high season, hotel rooms are at a premium price as with most Caribbean destinations. We are paying around $200/night and are beachfront.

I wouldnt let the condition of SXM deter you from a visit and a cruise. The airport tent is quite efficient from what I've read and is climate controlled.

Hotel room will still be in short supply in the Fall. Both Sonesta's are not expected to open soon. Book early.

This from the Light & Power Company: "He said the company had lost 30-40 per cent of its revenue with many of its major clients such as The Westin St. Maarten Dawn Beach Resort and Spa, Sonesta Maho Group, Divi Resorts and others being down since Irma, most of which he said had indicated that they will not be back online until late 2019.

But more positive news from the NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/travel/st-martin-after-hurricane-irma-.html

I went ahead and made a reservation at Sea View Beach Hotel for one night, Dec. 7. I used booking.com and can cancel with no cost. I don't know if it is even open now or they plan/hope to be later this year. It looks to be within walking distance of the cruise pier. I will monitor the hotel situation and can always change or cancel later on.

I just got home fromSt Marten off a Star Flyer cruise to BVI and I was on Windstar cruise scheduled for St Marten in December 2017 that was moved to Barbados, I can't see any reason that Windstar would not return to St Marten in december 2018. Yes there was damage but Front St and Boardwalk were open and plenty of places open. I stayed one night at Alicia's Inn and one night at Horizon View Beach Hotel and found both clean and plenty acceptable for pre or post cruise. A few of our fellow passengers stayed at Holland House.

Elklemi, how would you compare sailing with Star Flyer and sailing with Windstar?

I went ahead and made a reservation at Sea View Beach Hotel for one night, Dec. 7. I used booking.com and can cancel with no cost. I don't know if it is even open now or they plan/hope to be later this year. It looks to be within walking distance of the cruise pier. I will monitor the hotel situation and can always change or cancel later on.

Great location! Its a pretty good walk or there are three water taxi stops along that beach with one near your hotel. Drops you off at the cruise pier for $5.

Great location! Its a pretty good walk or there are three water taxi stops along that beach with one near your hotel. Drops you off at the cruise pier for $5.

Good to know. I just hope they are open for business by December. Maybe someone who has been to Phillipsburg recently can verify if they saw Sea View Beach Hotel open. It is located on Front Street.

Good to know. I just hope they are open for business by December. Maybe someone who has been to Phillipsburg recently can verify if they saw Sea View Beach Hotel open. It is located on Front Street.

They seem to be active on their FB page and made an announcement on March 8 that they are open for business and wrapping up final stages of rebuilding.

I passed the Sea View last week and not sure if it was open or not, looked kinda rough.

comparing Windstar and Star Flyer is like apples and oranges, Star Flyer is a working sailing ship and does use sails more and there is less deck space since so much is used for ropes and rigging, I rate Star Flyer food above Windstar altho both are good, my inside cabin on Flyer was much smaller than on Windstar but comfortable, I like that on Windstar we spent more time in ports, and we only had 82 on our FLyer cruise. If you have specifics you would like comment on please ask, I would sail either again in a minute depending on price, with both you get to experience the smaller islands which is what I really wanted.

comparing Windstar and Star Flyer is like apples and orange.

I have sailed on both Windstar and Star Clippers and the one difference that would keep me from ever going on a Star Clipper ship agin is the smoking policy. It is allowed anywhere on the open decks. Because they attract a European clientele that heavily smokes that is a turn off for me. If you area non smoker you can't get away from the smoke if you are on an open deck.

I have sailed on both Windstar and Star Clippers and the one difference that would keep me from ever going on a Star Clipper ship agin is the smoking policy. It is allowed anywhere on the open decks. Because they attract a European clientele that heavily smokes that is a turn off for me. If you area non smoker you can't get away from the smoke if you are on an open deck.

Aren't they a European cruise line? is it Luxembourg?

We were on Wind Surf and the smoke coming from the crew quarters down from the Deck 1 forward stairs and elevator was pretty noticeable, to the extent they have put an air filtration machine there,

of course you don't have to hang about there too long but I wouldn't want a cabin just there

don't think many of the crew on there is very European so probably cant blame Europe for the heavy smoking

The pricing of Star Clipper cruises is in Pound Sterling. I found the following from a Cruise Critic review of Star Clipper:

One important aspect of the passenger makeup should be noted: Star Clipper attracts a large number of Europeans (Americans on our sailing actually represented a 45 percent minority). This means that all announcements and cruise director comments are made in three languages -- not as bad as the Costa five-language benchmark, but a bit tedious nonetheless. Also, the ratio of smokers to non-smokers is higher than on most ships plying the American trade, and the rules for enforcing non-smoking areas are loosely enforced.

The pricing of Star Clipper cruises is in Pound Sterling. I found the following from a Cruise Critic review of Star Clipper:

 

One important aspect of the passenger makeup should be noted: Star Clipper attracts a large number of Europeans (Americans on our sailing actually represented a 45 percent minority). This means that all announcements and cruise director comments are made in three languages -- not as bad as the Costa five-language benchmark, but a bit tedious nonetheless. Also, the ratio of smokers to non-smokers is higher than on most ships plying the American trade, and the rules for enforcing non-smoking areas are loosely enforced.

There's a US Star Clipper website with prices in USD. I thought I might try them someday so I'm sorry to hear that smoking might be an issue on them. I'm pretty sensitive to cigarette smoke and wouldn't like to go on a cruise where smoking prevented me from enjoying being on deck.

I just looked it up as well, it used to be Luxembourg registry, now its Malta, and the line appears to be Swedish owned.

Interesting.

First time I ever saw Royal Clipper at least half the lamps were out on the rigging, looked untidy, and I thought if the maintenance isn't that good I don't want to sail on her.

Recently when I saw her they had changed the bulbs.

Sails are great but the rest of it isn't as nice as Wind Surf IMHO.

Smoking was allowed one on section of the ship outside the tropical bar on the port side, the other decks were smoke free. I am a non smoker and it was never an issue for me and if you are sailing the wind blows the smoke away and smoking was not allowed inside the ship. I was on the first deck and never had an issue with smoke coming from crew quarters. Of 82 passengers there was a good mix from US and Australia, and Europe, I guess US was about 50%. I did notice that in St. Bart I stopped at a bar/restaurant and noticed each table had an ask tray and smoking was allowed inside the restaurant.

Can't you fly direct from St. Maarten to Orlando? You will be adding another 6 or 7 hours to your travel by flying by way of Newark. Not to mention the terrible on-time record Newark airport has.

No direct flights from Orlando. We're on the same cruise, actually on the one before also. We got a direct flight from Miami, it was the only direct flight we could find in FL.