Photographic Bait and Switch
I had a complete systems meltdown here at the home office on Friday morning. All the phones and internet service went down (they’re through the same modem), and I’ve spent the better part of the past three days driving around my woodsy town trying to get cell phone service so that I could report the problem.
Finally, this afternoon, a technician arrived to get everything back up and running–and as he was leaving the house, he stopped short in front of the photo above, which is among those that hang in my living room.
“Where did you get that picture?” he asked. “I just went on a cruise ship to the Caribbean, because the pictures all looked like that in the brochure. But when I got there, they took me to these places that didn’t look like the pictures at all. I might as well have been pulling into the port of Newark, New Jersey.”
Oh, how many times I’ve heard that one. It’s the ol’ photographic bait and switch, with cruise ship companies advertising the kinds of secluded beaches that, well, just don’t exist in places where 3,000 passengers a day get offloaded. I shot that particular photo during a charter in the Exumas section of the Bahamas, which cruise ships can’t access because they simply can’t fit. That’s why the beaches are so pristine, quite frankly. They’re accessed only by locals and charter yacht vacationers.
The poor service technician didn’t know what he was in for making that complaint in my house. I sent him home with a copy of my how-to-charter book Dream Cruises and gave him an earful about all the cruise ship problems that I occasionally highlight here on the CharterWave Editor’s Blog. Based on the stunned look in his saucer-size eyes, I think the next time he heads off in search of a beautiful island, it will be onboard a small charter yacht with his friends instead of aboard a similarly priced, mammoth cruise ship.
Funny how having no ability to connect with the outside world for a few days led me to this opportunity to spread the message of yacht charter. Maybe I’ll disconnect the phones for good. And stare at that picture of the pretty beach. And pretend I’m on charter right now instead of needing to return nearly a hundred phone and e-mail messages…