News & Cruise Reviews

Here we share the latest small-ship cruise news and first-person cruise reviews and round-ups from our team of globetrotting writers. If you've got a penchant for small-scale travel aboard boats, yachts, tall ships and mini cruisers, then enjoy the ride through our sea of stories about small-ship cruising.

Loading

Write A Review

UnCruise Ad

UnCruise ad about Alaska

Heidi Booking Ad

QuirkyCruise Heidi Booking ad

2023 SATW Lowell Thomas QC Win

SATW Lowell Thomas Award winner

2023 SATW Lowell Thomas QC Win 2

2023 SATW Lowell Thomas QC Win for Heidi

SC & PK’s YT Channel

PK YouTube Sea Cloud

Adsense

Sign Up box

QC Sign Up Ad Sept 22

bird

Travel Without the Crowds

SATW Proud member

Adsense

About Us


Heidi and Ted HEIDI SARNA

I'm up to 78 countries and 110+ cruises worldwide, and it's the small ship journeys that I love writing about most. And so QuirkyCruise.com was born, an excellent research tool for planning your own unforgettable small ship trip.

THEODORE W. SCULL

I have traveled between all continents by sea and cruised along three dozen rivers. Ships and travel are in my blood, and so is writing. My journeys have translated into many books and many hundreds of articles.

More...

Our Small Ship Cruise Reviews & Articles

If you can imagine it, we’ve cruised it! With reviews, articles and destination overviews, we’ve got you covered.

HEBRIDES Cruises

HEBRIDES Cruises

Hebrides Cruises Hebrides Cruises is a small family-operated line that currently operates two vessels taking just 8 to 10 passengers on cruises to Scotland’s Western Isles, lochs and the Caledonian Canal that stretches 60 miles across Scotland to Inverness. The...

Puttering Along on a Maine Coast Cruise

Puttering Along on a Maine Coast Cruise

Maine Coast Cruise By Ted Scull For a summer trip, my wife and I hunted for a cruise that would be a complete change of pace, one well removed from mega ships and milling crowds. After a thorough search using brochures that came in the mail and website links, we chose...

Ponant’s Summer Sailings & Many More Small-Ship Tidings

Ponant’s Summer Sailings & Many More Small-Ship Tidings

Ponant's Summer Sailings By Anne Kalosh Ponant's Summer Sailings Ponant, which resumed service last summer before halting over the winter, plans a gradual resumption in summer 2021 featuring its new polar vessel, Le Commandant-Charcot, and sailings in the Arctic,...

Windstar Drops Alaska in 2021 & Announces Delays

Windstar Drops Alaska in 2021 & Announces Delays

Windstar Drops Alaska in 2021 By Anne Kalosh Windstar Cruises became the first line to give Alaska a pass in 2021. This news comes with the postponement of all sailings until May and revised routes to skip the United States and Mexico. The delay impacts the recently...

The Chesapeake Bay — A Small-Ship Cruising Guide

The Chesapeake Bay — A Small-Ship Cruising Guide

The Chesapeake Bay By Theodore W. Scull In the eastern United States, the Chesapeake Bay, fringed by the states of Maryland and Virginia, forms the country’s largest estuary measuring 200 north-south miles. Its present brackish expanse, only about 3000 years old,...

Hurtigruten Sells 1964-built Lofoten, its Oldest Ship

Hurtigruten Sells 1964-built Lofoten, its Oldest Ship

Hurtigruten Sells 1964-built Lofoten By Ted Scull Aficionados, do not despair! With almost any ship, aged 56, one would expect the next destination would be the last — a scrapyard where ships die. Nothing doing for this workhorse, having held down a proud place in a...

RUNNING on Waves

RUNNING on Waves

Running on Waves One of the world’s largest sailing yachts, the 42-passenger Running on Waves is a tall ship built with classic proportions and modern technology. It was built by the Polish superyacht yard Segel Masten Yachten and launched in 2011. This luxury...

TRADEWIND Voyages (DEFUNCT)

TRADEWIND Voyages (DEFUNCT)

Tradewind Voyages 2023 UPDATE: This company is currently not operating the Golden Horizon, as the ship is laid up once again due to various disputes. Golden Horizon as completed is a near replica of 1913’s France II, the world’s largest square-rigged vessel....

SKARV Lines

SKARV Lines

Skarv Lines Skarv Lines is an owner-operated, single vessel, small cruise ship company that offers rugged adventures around Scotland’s incomparable Hebrides. More unusually they also venture to the country’s Orkney archipelago and Scotland’s East Coast. While there is...

ATLAS Ocean Tours

ATLAS Ocean Tours

Atlas Ocean Tours Atlas Ocean Tours has a mighty powerful name for a company that is the smallest QuirkyCruise ship operator we have covered thus far. One-week trips explore the southern part of Haida Gwaii (formerly Queen Charlotte Islands) in a patch of Canadian...

QuirkyCruise News: Windstar’s Star Breeze Stretched & Transformed

QuirkyCruise News: Windstar’s Star Breeze Stretched & Transformed

Star Breeze Stretched And Transformed by Anne Kalosh. Windstar Cruises' Star Breeze has just emerged from what was heralded as the most challenging cruise ship lengthening ever undertaken. Besides being cut in half to gain a new midsection, the vessel built in 1989 as...

  • Subscribe

    Sign up for our monthly newsletter to get insider reviews, tips & deals on unusual & small-ship cruises.

  • * I would like to subscribe to the QuirkyCruise newsletters. QuirkyCruise.com will not sell your email. See PRIVACY POLICY