Ponant’s Le Champlain is a small ship, with 92 cabins meaning a max of 184 people, plus 114 crew members. I’m “of an age,” I travel solo, and I am basically an introvert. The ship weighs in at less than ten gross tons which barely seems large enough to be called a ship (instead of a boat). I was looking at an eight-day positioning cruise from Boston to Cancun in October, so no ports of call and still a potentially active hurricane month. It’s a French ship with a French crew. They speak French, then English and I tried to fail high school Spanish. There’s a French chef preparing French food. Although the French cruise company is decades old, it’s relatively new to the US market, so the passenger ratio is about 60% European and 40% American and, of the 60% European, most are French.
What could possibly go wrong?
First, I’m now addicted to French butter. Chef Jean-Pierre Neale says he uses imported French water, the aforementioned French butter, and 440 pounds of French flour EVERY week for bread, pastries, and, well, anything that requires those ingredients. They do make a difference.
But, back to the beginning. Le Champlain shared a Boston dock with MSC’s Meraviglia and its high noon shadow is larger than Le Champlain. Many differences are easy to spot. The number of decks on the MSC ship is overwhelming. The hordes of people being disgorged from bus after van after cab and ambling around, trying to determine where they’re supposed to go is mind-boggling. Meanwhile, at the Ponant ship, I (and the other passengers) was met at my cab and taken into the waiting area until boarding time. To combat my shyness, I tend to wear a scarf with the colors of the Maryland flag (red, gold, white, and black). About half the time, someone will ask about it or recognize it from Maryland and a conversation starts that I don’t have to initiate. Yes, someone mentioned my scarf, someone with a French accent! His English is much better than my French! He talked about the places he’d visited in the United States and then it was time to board. Again, we were individually escorted into the reception area and then to our cabin.
“What’s surprising on a ship this size is how many decisions still have to be made. Do I want to sleep on the right side of the king size mattress by the sliding verandah doors or the left side, nearer the door? Do I want to make a whale keychain or have a massage? Do I want to try the caviar (Chef says he went through two two-kilo tins of the stuff in thirty minutes) with the blinis (made with the French flour, etc.) or the Iberico ham tasting. Do I want to take the French lessons or listen to the pianist in the lounge or explore the bridge which is open almost all the time. ::: 
sigh ::: Decisions, decisions, decisions.”
Friends are made almost instantly. Dining at all meals is open seating, so I would either join a table or sit alone when I was the first to a table and then I’d be joined by other diners. Most of the other passengers seem to have traveled extensively and conversations were inevitably Noel Coward-witty. Business people, stay-at-home moms or dads, college or university personnel, real estate agents, and retirees. Months later, I still correspond with a couple of them.
There were a few disappointments. First, Chef says he picked up 65 live lobsters in Boston and kept them in tanks in the bilge. Hmm. No, I didn’t visit them. Am I limping because Chef pulled my leg? I guess I’ll never know. Because we didn’t have a port of call, we didn’t have a chance to use the marina aft on deck three for Scuba, snorkeling, and other water activities. No surprise, I knew that when I signed on for the cruise. However, I was looking forward to seeing and hearing lots of underwater critters through the underwater windows in the Blue Eye lounge (with microphones to pick up noises within three miles or five kilometers of the ship). Unfortunately, the animals weren’t swimming in or near our lane. They did congregate and show off once in port, though.
Due to the constant barrage of French, I could understand a lot more by the end of the cruise, but I sure didn’t try to speak it beyond “oui,” “merci,” “bonjour,” and a few other basics that I already knew. I pride myself on being able to read restaurant French, Spanish, German, and Italian, so the menus weren’t a problem. The crew delivering the nightly newsletter knows who receives the French version, the English version, and whatever other language is available. Oh, the reason Ponant’s ships carry masculine names? Le bateau is French for boat. It’s a masculine noun, so the ships have masculine names.