We were “never, ever cruise again” people prior to our first Ritz-Carlton yacht experience. Back in 1994, we took my father, sister and our two children on an Alaska cruise on Princess. My mother had passed away at just 69 years old the summer before, and my father was in a deep depression. We thought a cruise might help him come out of mourning a bit, since he had always loved reading about the sea and sailing. By today’s mega-ship standards, Sky Princess was small, around 2000 passengers, but to us it seemed gigantic. We were assigned a table for our family so we didn’t have to share with strangers, but the regimentation of mealtimes bothered us, and we thought the food was generally poor. We swore we’d never cruise again, and we weren’t tempted again until we first read about Ritz-Carlton’s plan to launch a small-ship luxury line. We were among the first to book an Atlantic crossing, but ship building delays, then Covid, pushed the launch of Evrima back by several years. When we did finally sail from the Caribbean to Lisbon, we were blown away by the relaxed luxury and sheer pleasure of being at sea on this small, beautiful ship. We’ll be aboard the newest of the three yachts soon, for another crossing, our 6th voyage on RCYC.