Floats My Boat
For hopeless unbelievers who thought they’d never vacation at sea, a Belle and Sebastianhosted music cruise proved better than staying home.
The long-gone dockyards of the River Clyde built some of the world’s most famous ocean liners, including Queen
Mary and QE2, but cruise ships aren’t spotted in Glasgow anymore — quite apart from anything else because it rains on average roughly every other day in Scotland’s biggest city. Which is one reason among many as to why The Boaty Weekender — a Mediterranean music cruise last August hosted by cult Glasgow indie-pop band Belle and Sebastian — was such a transcendent joy to be a part of.
The Glasgow music scene was long overdue for a few days in the sun, and got them on a slow ship from Barcelona to Cagliari and back again, across flat seas punctuated by frequent dolphins and under clear skies broken by the occasional flamingo. Fellow travelers from near and far included likeminded bands such as Teenage Fanclub, Camera Obscura, Mogwai, Yo La Tengo, Alvvays, Buzzcocks, and more, as well as fans from practically every continent — many a first- time cruiser among them (myself included). As Belle and Sebastian singer Stuart Murdoch put it to me aboard Norwegian Pearl, it was as if “the geeks made it to heaven for a long weekend,” and he wasn’t wrong.
Music cruises are of course nothing new. The Boaty Weekender’s Atlanta- based promoters Sixthman alone have staged dozens of them over the last two decades, including well- known repeat sailings such as The KISS Kruise and the Kid Rock Cruise. But this voyage was different in a number of ways. For one thing it was Sixthman’s waters- testing (and by all appearances, very successful) first expedition in the Med. In partnering with bookish purveyors of lush, literate songcraft Belle and Sebastian — a band who first broke out with a string of seminal albums in the mid- to- late 1990s that remain the soundtrack to many peoples’ lives — they opened the music cruise experience up to a whole new demographic of Gen Xers and Millennials and their families who might never have previ
Our hosts’ three sets across the weekend, like every performance I saw on the Boaty, felt like collector’s items; unique pleasures never to be experienced again in quite the same way.
ously pictured themselves vacationing on the ocean waves. Funnily enough, Belle and Sebastian actually got close to organizing a cruise ship festival of their own around 20 years back, albeit in rather less exotic and glamorous circumstances: on a ferry around the waters of Great Britain.
All of the major artists on the bill got a turn on the pool deck main stage, a pinch-yourself- pretty openair space in which you could feel the ocean breeze in your hair and take in sweeping views off the port and starboard sides at a mere turn of the head. Hearing Belle and Sebastian play the jangling opening chords of “Another Sunny Day” as we left Barcelona on a balmy Thursday evening, as the ship began to move beneath us for the first time and the city skyline started to fade into the haze, wasn’t simply spine- tingling so much as enough to give tingles to your tingles’ tingles. Our hosts’ three sets across the weekend, like every performance I saw on the Boaty, felt like collector’s items; unique pleasures never to be experienced again in quite the same way. Listening to a band as legendarily loud as post- rock titans Mogwai from the front row of Norwegian Pearl’s Stardust Theater through a ridiculously powerful sound system is an experience my thoroughly rearranged molecules will never forget.
While undoubtedly there were aspects of the cruise ship experience that took some getting used to for the uninitiated, there was much that felt oddly familiar. After all, whether you’re surrounded by rolling seas or rolling fields, the principles of a music festival are much the same — bands and bars galore, communal good vibes, a nearby place to lay your head if it all gets too much. ( A cabin beats a tent any day.) It was just that this festival was also in motion across the Med. And had a 24/ 7 all-you- can- eat buffet. And hot tubs.
Whether or not I would be in a rush to board a cruise ship again without it being for another floating festival hosted by Belle and Sebastian or another of my favorite bands is hard to say; several weeks of feeling dry land still shifting beneath my feet after I disembarked says it all as to this geek’s natural ocean readiness. But this much I can say for sure: were Belle and Sebastian ever to stage a repeat cruise ship weekender — and nobody within the band’s team was ruling it out — then they would see plenty of familiar faces aboard. The Boaty’s Facebook group remains alive with fans from Glasgow to New York, Tokyo and beyond continuing to share photos, videos, and memories from a weekend on which clearly a lot of new friendships were forged. Whether or indeed when they might all get the chance to do it again is a frequent topic of conversation. Which I guess is the essence of any great cruise ship experience, whether it’s music-themed or not.
First- time cruisers many of us may have been, but if the Boaty should ever sail again, definitely not last- timers.