The easyCruise Experience

Squeezed between hefty liners in St. Maarten’s port, easyCruise looks like a minnow among whales. We sit in our modest hot tub, sipping cocktails, while hulls of other ships tower above us and, from their cabins, the liners’ passengers peer down upon us like bees from hives.

The budget cruise brand, founded by Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the upstart patron of European low-cost carrier easyJet and a recent convert to the importance of travel agents (the company now offers agent commission), is in its second Caribbean season, and it sticks a thumb in the eye of an industry stampeding toward luxury and insularity. It’s probably easiest to think of the concept as a cross between a taxi and a floating hotel: Over seven days, easyCruiseOne, our 86-cabin vessel (in another life, it was Renaissance Cruises’ Renaissance II) does a six-island Caribbean circuit, calling on St. Maarten on Friday and Monday, along with St. Barts, Anguilla, St. Kitts, Nevis and Antigua.

The vessel motors a few hours each night to the next port, while most aboard are asleep. Passengers can hop on and off wherever they want, with a two-night minimum. And, if prices were any lower, the boat would have oars: from $33.75 per night per twin cabin, and rising to about twice that with demand. Split between two, that’s $17 a night. In St. Barts, your lunch alone will cost more.

The trade-off, of course, is a truncated list of amenities. Cabins are Spartan and sleek. Not quite seven feet wide, doubles are impeccably clean and, on first sight, shockingly basic twin beds on a low graphite-colored pedestal, a shelf, a few coat hangers and a glass cubicle that contains a shower, push-button toilet, and a stylish elliptical sink. No phone, no TV, no closet, not a stick of furniture. There is barely enough room at the foot of the bed to slide a piece of carry-on rollaway luggage. Even housekeeping services are an additional $10 per use.

My fellow passengers range from college-age to gray, and all have one thing in common: a desire to dig into the destinations. Most days, no one has to be back onboard until around two in the morning.

One of the unexpected pleasures of easyCruise takes place around dinnertime at the larger ports. That’s when the mighty cruise ships lumber off, leaving us alone to enjoy the panorama and, after dark, savor the true flavor of the islands without hordes of tourists. We eat like locals and feel like yachties.

At night, an onboard party promoter spins at the outdoor Sun and Moon Cafe on deck 5, but most of us arrive back onboard exhausted by days of hiking, snorkeling and sun bathing, and can muster just a few minutes of soaking in the tub before retiring.

During the day, easyCruise goes mostly empty, not that there’s much to do onboard anyway. The two bars, a tiny gym, sun deck, sauna, extra-fee Web terminals and hot tub remain open but they’re mostly for rainy days. There is an onboard restaurant, “Fusion on 4,” that offers moderately priced a la carte dishes.

The ship’s cruise director offers excursions (priced around $15 to $35), but most passengers are only interested in arranging transportation. For them, easyCruise is a means to reach places previously beyond their reach or budget; if they had wanted convenience and service, they’d be wearing a tuxedo on one of those giants, somewhere at sea.