Small cruise line plans six visits
Elvira Schmatzler and her companion, Virginia Cameron, have been here several times over the years but they had never witnessed the Portuguese Festival and Blessing of the Fleet.
Duncan Bailey and his wife, Barbara, had never been to Provincetown and were having fun ducking into the stores on Commercial Street. All of them, plus another 50 or so fellow passengers, arrived here recently on the Grande Caribe, a 96-passenger small cruise ship owned by the American Canadian Caribbean Line (ACCL). The niche cruise company has included Provincetown on its Cape Cod & Islands itinerary for the first time this summer, hoping to gauge customer interest in continuing the tour in the future.
“Most of our passengers are repeats. We wanted to offer something different, give them more variety,” said Erika Moore, ACCL operations manager. “Provincetown is so different from the other stops, a little more vibrant and eclectic. The art galleries are a draw for our people.”
ACCL has scheduled six tours into Provincetown this summer, part of a five-night cruise that includes Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and Newport, R.I. The new summer tour was the result of marketing by the Provincetown Tourism Office, Chamber of Commerce and harbormaster’s office to attract more cruise ships to the harbor. The ships, which rarely stay more than 24 hours, often drop hundreds of passengers into town, and most spend money on food and shopping. A large cruise ship operated by Rosie O’Donnell’s company, R Family Vacations, is scheduled to anchor here next week.
ACCL, however, specializes in small cruise ships that can tie up directly to MacMillan Pier. That makes it easier for the passengers, Moore said, who can walk to most sites in town without having to spend time waiting for a tender to ferry them to the dock. That seemed to work for the Baileys, who ignored most of the town’s history in favor of shopping.
“There are some unique stores here that you don’t see in Inman, S.C.,” Bailey said, referring to his hometown. “We helped pump a little money into the local economy.”
Schmatzler and Cameron, who live in Plymouth and have traveled to Provincetown frequently in the past, were more interested in the Blessing of the Fleet, which took place a few yards from their ship, an unexpected bonus on their trip.
“We felt like it was a foreign country,” Schmatzler said. “[The Blessing] was so different. We didn’t expect anything like that in Provincetown.”
“It was really fascinating. The boats kept coming and coming,” Cameron said.
The ACCL cruises to Provincetown and the Islands had low passenger numbers for the four trips in June but are almost fully booked for the two August cruises. Moore said that even if the company deems the new cruise a success, they have scheduled only one trip to Provincetown next summer. The reason is that the company has to finalize its sailing schedule over a year in advance and did not have any information on the popularity of the new Cape and Islands cruise before it had to commit to the 2009 season.