A tale of two crossings

By Mark Schatzker

updated 3:02 p.m. ET April 25, 2008

On a sunny afternoon in Los Angeles last spring, I set out to do something relatively few people have done — I set out to cross the Pacific Ocean by boat. I know what you're thinking: Lots of people ply the Pacific by ship. Sailors in the Navy, for instance. Or the deckhands — lonely souls, all of them — who man the container ships that plod back and forth between China and L.A., delivering flat-screen TVs, jeans, and innumerable cheaply manufactured widgets. But hardly anybody else can be bothered.

Let's face it: Crossing the Pacific Ocean hasn't been trendy since the 16th century, when explorers like Ferdinand Magellan and Francis Drake made it famous. But the planet's largest geographical feature never caught on with travelers, not the way traversing the Atlantic did. And yet, if you look hard enough, you can find a handful of ocean liners — maybe three a year — that make the trip. I booked my ticket. The ship was big and white. It's called the Crystal Symphony.

I'd never been on a cruise before, and was taken with the idea of spending days on end aboard a multi-ton vessel designed from keel to funnel (that's what nautical types call that big chimney) with the pursuit of pleasure in mind. Which is why, right after I crossed the Pacific, I planned to cross the planet's other big ocean, the Atlantic.

Consider the geography involved. Both cruises add up to some 12,000 miles — roughly half the planet. Half the planet, I would like to add, that no one is spending much time seeing. People have this funny habit of visiting everything but the oceans — the deserts, the forests, the jungles, the lakes, the mountains, the rivers, the cities. So one day I decided: It's high time I saw the ocean — really saw the ocean.

Here is what I can tell you: It is vast. It is impersonal. It is wavy like you can't imagine, except for those rare moments when, miraculously, it lies still. On a bright afternoon two thousand miles south of Alaska, it looked like a magnificent indigo pile rug. A day later, under a sky blotched with clouds, it resembled the hide of a huge slumbering animal, heaving up and down as it breathed. Two days before we hit Hawaii, it struck me that an ocean swell is the ultimate in existentialism: unremitting and blind. The waves marched across the horizon like Victorian factory workers. Their movement was both vigorous and futile — as if to say, "What else you gonna do out here?"

And then, a few hundred miles later, their outlook on life changed. The waves were hulking, irritated, and crested with foam, appearing an awful lot like a bunch of young goons headed to a fight. I made a mental note: Do nothing to upset the waves. And as though to stress the point, the nose of the vessel nodded up and down in exaggerated, practically patronizing concurrence.

I can gaze at water for hours. And when you stand on the deck of a 51,000-ton luxury liner, you notice the following: When the hull plunges into the ocean after being raised by a swell, it drags down a big pocket of air that explodes into billions of tiny bubbles which get caught in a slow-motion journey to the surface. To serious seafarers, this phenomenon has a name: spume. A trail of spume stretched out behind the ship for miles. It was frothy and turquoise and had the look of a rare substance. As I stared at it, I had a fantasy of collecting it in buckets — like a grape picker in Burgundy — and then selling it in fancy boutiques all over town. But as I emerged from my dream state, I realized that those little bubbles would pop and all that would be left would be salt water. To enjoy the wonders of spume, you have to be on the ocean.

The precise moment of departure wasn't something I'd thought about even once, but it turned out to be quietly thrilling. I was seated in a roomy lounge at the front of the Crystal Symphony called the Palm Court, about to tuck into a scone piled with whipped cream and strawberries. There was movement, but it was movement unlike any I'd ever known. The transition from rest to motion was borderless. The swish of the two eighteen-foot propellers left not a ripple in the milky tea in my cup. The land outside began to go by.

I walked out on deck. We were making our way down a channel leading to the open sea. On one side, a crane was carefully dismantling a stack of containers on board the Xin Yan Tian, a cargo ship from Shanghai. On the other, more cranes and what looked like an oil refinery, punctuated by the odd palm tree. The Symphony, immaculate and white, must have seemed to the other boats like a fat cat in a leisure suit.

An hour later, the continent of North America had all but receded. Los Angeles and its 5.5 million automobiles — 5 million of them stuck in traffic — had been reduced to an absurd concept just over the horizon. Ahead of us, the ocean was empty as far as the eye could see. We were traveling twenty 22 miles per hour, headed for China, with nothing to do.

That's not quite true. There was lots to do. I could go to the gym or for a swim. I could take a line-dancing lesson, bid on a painting at auction, nurse a cappuccino next to the two-story fountain in the main "plaza," go to a movie, play a hand of blackjack or bridge. Where does a person start?

I started by standing on deck and staring over the side. For a long time, I was stricken by a fear of going overboard. The Pacific Ocean is an awfully big place to go for a swim. You would be nothing — a bobbing head between the waves, a tiny pinprick of individuality in a literal sea of gray. But as I stared, the sun came out and I inhaled the warm, salty breeze. Eventually, I no longer pictured myself swimming helplessly as the ship sailed away. Instead, I noticed the spume.

From this, I progressed to wandering the halls. Halls that were surprisingly empty. Crystal bills itself as a six-star cruise line, and that sixth star is due to the fact that no one ever has to line up for anything. If you want to take the galley tour, take it. No employee will greet you ten minutes beforehand to say, "I'm sorry, sir, but the tour is full." Similarly, if you become seized with the desire to soak in the hot tub, well, climb on in, because there will be room. There are no queues in front of the dining room at 6:30 p.m.; there is always an available Lifecycle in the gym; and the elevator doors never open to reveal a compartment too crowded for one more. Simply put, on Crystal the ratio of ship to passenger is a lot higher than on other vessels. There is an unintended consequence to this: Even when the Symphony is full, it feels half empty. You can stand in a hallway for minutes and not see another soul. This, you might say, is the price of luxury.

Then there is the actual price of luxury, namely, what the cruise costs. In this case it was a bargain: $3,635 for 17 days. The voyage from Los Angeles to Hong Kong is what's known in the industry as a repositioning cruise. This is what happens when a cruise line needs to get a ship from one continent to another. The ticket is a good deal, but the trip is not without its drawbacks. It offers hardly anything in the way of ports of call — our single stop was Honolulu, and only for a day. The median age shoots up; I was one of a handful of non-grayhairs. And more than one seasoned cruiser warned me that it's difficult to secure decent entertainment for a 17-day itinerary. (On day 12, I took in a magic show that included shadow puppets set to music and realized that the warnings were accurate.)

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