Pam and Barry from Lincoln are aboard a cruise ship and they’re going SKI-ing. This doesn’t involve fake snow or steep slopes, though broken bones are still a risk.
SKI-ing is an acronym: Spending the Kids’ Inheritance. It’s one of those catchphrases beloved of the Boomer generation, like ‘On an adventure before dementia’, providing justification for an expensive holiday.
Heading for Madeira in one of the MS Nieuw Statendam’s 1,339 cabins, on Supercruising: Life At Sea, Barry insisted he and his wife had their children’s permission to blow their nest egg: ‘They’ve all said, “It’s your money, Mum and Dad, you go and spend it”.’
He might have added that it’s better to enjoy it now than wait for the taxman to steal it.
You could still come home in a plaster cast from a SKI-ing trip, as Pam and Barry realised when they took a sleigh ride on one of Madeira’s carros de cesto.
These wooden sleds career down the mile-long hill above the island’s capital, Funchal, steered by carreiros – men in white trousers and straw boaters, who look like gondoliers, except in Venice you’re less likely to crash into a wall at high speed.
Supercruising: Life At Sea follows couple Barry and Pam (pictured) as they spend their life savings on a holiday around Madeira with the encouragement of their children
The absence of crime and violence in Supercruising is one of its attractions and marks a stark change from the nightly bodycam footage of police battering down drug dealers’ doors
Barry and Pam’s son enjoying horseback riding while on holiday
To make the prospect even more dangerous, the sleds have to dodge cars and other traffic.
Your real risk, though, is being caught in the crossfire of a gunfight. In 2017, the head of the carreiros, Norberto Gouveia, was shot several times in the head following an argument at the top of the sled run. This fact was not mentioned in the documentary, and I bet the Madeira tourist board don’t put it in their brochures either.
The absence of crime and violence in Supercruising is one of its attractions. This show, narrated by Nick Brimble, is not much more than an hour-long ad for holidays on the high seas, but that does make a welcome change from the nightly bodycam footage of police battering down drug dealers’ doors and paramedics treating teenagers for stab wounds.
For Rich Fontaine, the chief security officer of the Nieuw Statendam, the only lawlessness he has to deal with involves prohibited electrical items such as travel kettles. Passengers try to smuggle them aboard, to brew a cuppa in the cabin.
‘We’d rather take it now than have to go into their cabin and take it once the fire has started,’ Rich said piously.
Since flame grills are also forbidden, one highlight of a Caribbean cruise is an island stop-off for a beach barbecue. The MS Rotterdam, sailing out of Fort Lauderdale in Florida, called in at the idyllic Half Moon Bay in the Bahamas, where passengers tucked into 1,800 burgers and 600 hotdogs.
Back on the ship, they managed to munch their way through three-quarters of a ton of lobsters. At that rate, the adventure won’t end in dementia — indigestion will kill them first.
