Since 2009, my wife and I have traveled the world at eighteen knots. By this, I mean we discovered cruises. Now, I’m also helping others discover the magic of sailing the seven seas. Eighteen Knots Travel is ready to help you! Please send us your questions or requests and we can get started!
My wife, Virginia and I decided to get away at Christmas a few years ago. After a bit of discussion, we decided we would take a cruise, since that was something both of us were interested in trying, and neither of us had ever done. We soon discovered that the “White” in “White Christmas” really meant white, sandy beaches. So, now we have annual Christmas cruises. Then, we managed to take the inaugural crossing of the Norwegian Breakaway from Southampton to New York. So, now we’re doing Transatlantic cruises, as well.
From that first experimental cruise in 2009 to today, we have both become Latitudes Platinum Plus members on Norwegian Cruise Lines. (MSC Cruises kindly matched our status, so we’re Voyagers Club Diamond members, as well.) We’ve traveled with family and friends – specifically, friends we met on another cruise, and our niece, nephew and kids, and we all survived. (Our latest travel companion is Graham Gnome.) I’ve added the route maps for our travels.
This site has gone through a multitude of changes over the years, in name. domain and in content, so I’m hoping this is its final home. (Mainly, I’m tired of learning different web technologies every couple of years, and I’m really tired of re-entering the GPS coordinates to map our trips.) So, the maps are all provided by Google Maps, and the GPS data is all stored in my Google Drive. Hopefully, that will last a while longer than some of the other iterations – and survive the occasionally computer crash at the house.
Here is a link to our full-page Cruise Map, showing all the ports we’ve called upon (so far.) You’ll notice there are quite a few repeats – which we’re trying to remedy, but there will always be more islands out there.
I have a highly sophisticated system of naming my GPS markers – two-digit year + X + marker number, so 13X01 is the first marker from our cruise in 2013. This system broke as soon as we had a two-cruise year. At that point, I realized the “X” was for “Christmas” (clever, no?) and I used “T” for Transatlantic cruises. This broke as soon as we had the vow renewal cruise in 2015, so I used “A” for “Anniversary”. (I’ll suppose I’ll have to remember to use “K” for Alaska, as in “AK”. I didn’t.) Hopefully, there won’t be any more, but I can see “P” for “Panama” eventually.
Kevin Gilhooly
Dallas, Texas and the Seven Seas
kevin@ejghteenknots.com
