ART OF TRAVEL

• Raffles
• Onboard
• Ashore
• Financial
• Donald Starkey Designs
• Exploration
• FAQ
• Technical
• Press
• Contact

• Why Raffles is different
• Your home is the world
• Apartment in every port
• The worlds finest ship
• Be a traveller
• Life is calling
• Interior design choices
• Living
• Services
• Recreation/ transport
• Fearless luxury

Be a traveller not a tourist

where you go / when

On Raffles time is not important. It offers a constantly stimulating, always interesting and enjoyable lifestyle without any of the stress and aggravation common in world travel today.

It is planned to spend only (on average) 1 week in 4 at sea. Even travelling at economical speeds, Raffles will circumnavigate the world 2.5 times, travelling 177,000km / 110,000 miles in its initial 5 years of operation, visiting every continent, the Arctic / Antarctica, as far as 2,000 miles up the Amazon river, and anywhere and everywhere in between at its owners’ discretion. This is a major difference between Raffles and conventional cruise ships or even the smaller, more flexible ‘adventure’ ships.  Just as on a mega yacht, Raffles' owners can choose to spend a few days or a few weeks in one location, in port or anchored off an idyllic South Sea Island.  The schedule is determined only by the owners wishes.

Thanks to the fact that Raffles does not carry any “day paying” passengers, there is no strict port schedule to load or discharge them. With no fixed schedule, Raffles can always avoid bad weather and will probably spend a very large part of its life in a perpetual summer climate. However with its Lloyd’s Register classed full double hull, built to near nuclear icebreaker standards, it can safely operate in Antarctic ice, and like the QM2, if ever needed, can cross the Atlantic in mid-winter.

Designed to be almost totally self sufficient Raffles needs to refuel only twice a year and will pick up its food and most supplies as it moves along, augmented by gourmet items for its supermarket dispatched quarterly from world renowned sources such as Harrods and Fortnum & Masons in London.

Raffles will cruise the world, but not the scheduled, regimented, crowded and polluted world of the mass tourist. There are no organized games or activities, no regimentation. You only join in what you want to with your village neighbours and live the life you want to, not one dictated by the crew or the ships schedule.