KNOWING where one wants to cruise is rarely a problem. It’s deciding on which trip to take you there that’s the challenge. There’s more variety out there than many travellers realise.The mass-marketed mammoth giants fresh out of shipyards get most of the publicity. If the idea of sailing off with 3,000 to 5,000 passengers interests you, television, newspaper and magazine ads will tell you all about them in their very competitive campaigns.

But one hears far less about what’s known as the “niche market” cruise ships. No, it’s definitely not a declining market, although the giant conglomerates would like travellers to think so. There’s a long, impressive list of them, along with passengers who refuse to cruise on anything else.

However, they’re so in demand, with such devoted repeat clientele that they don’t have to bombard the airwaves to sell their more limited space.

Names like Crystal, Regent, Seabourn, Wind Star, Silverseas, Star Clipper, Majestic, Intrav, Oceania, Fred Olsen, Sea Cloud, Discovery, Le Diamant, Travel Dynamics International, Explorer, Azamara, smaller Holland America ships . . . and on and on fill my files with temptations.

We waded through volumes of them in March when we decided early May would be a good time for a cruise. That was the easy part. Anxious to avoid crowds and piers congested with massive floating hotels, we’d first focused on EuropeK>National Trust for Historic Preservation had a tempting “Celtic Lands” itinerary to ancient sites in Brittany, Ireland, Wales, England and Scotland. They were all places previously enjoyed, but worth encore visits. Although the ship had space, getting there and back turned out to be overly complicated.Holland America’s Mediterranean explorations out of Venice called on two exceptional locations this writer never tires of revisiting — Corsica and Dubrovnik. But attempts to schedule flights turned out to be impossible.

Buying an American Airlines ticket to Italy, then upgrading to Business Class for 50,000 miles and an extra $500 was already booked until July. Problem was, the ship sailed in early May.

What we really wanted was our great favourite, the Wind Surf, a masted, 15,000-ton, 312-passenger sailing yacht we’ve written about before. Unfortunately, its spring itinerary wasn’t going any of the places we wanted to go.

Everyone is looking for something different in a cruise. Some want lots of action, nightly entertainment, multiple ports and are so on the go, the size of a stateroom isn’t important to them because they’re seldom in it.

Others prefer solitude, space, a quiet breakfast in their room, leisurely hours relaxing reading on their private veranda and viewing the scenery as it glides by.

Studying cruise brochures is fast becoming as bad as watching high- pressure infomercials on television overhyping a product. Almost all now proclaim to have “the finest cuisine at sea”, “country club casual ambience”, “the world’s most desirable ports”, “easy elegance”, “luxurious living”, “world-renowned guest lecturers”, “celebrated service”, “the world’s best”.

So don’t count on any of that self-promotion as a guideline. Instead check with friends who’ve returned as happy cruisers and treasured travel agents familiar with your personal preferences.

Certainly any cruise is a special experience. There’s a unique magic about going to sea, even if only on a ferry or freighter.

What this traveller would like most to discover is a cruise ship that really, truly looks like a ship, not the cookie-cutter sameness of floating hotels being mass-produced on assembly lines.

Admittedly, when you remember the grandeur, style and class of the great liners of past years, many of today’s ships are like comparing a Bentley to a Volkswagen.

A dozen brochures spread out before me all proclaim to be rated the world’s best in some category by some magazine survey. The amazing thing is, no one I know who subscribes to those publications has ever been surveyed, including me. (Exc for Las Vegas <$>magazine which annually includes such a questionnaire in its publication.)

How do they arrive at those coveted ratings? By being one of the magazine’s major advertisers? Who knows?

This journalist has been taking an informal personal survey asking fellow journalists and friends who subscribe to all these publications if they’re ever surveyed. None has yet surfaced.

At a large estate sale recently, my target was the staff, a group of affluent women very involved in charitable work. They regularly cruise Crystal, Silverseas, Regent, Oceania and still lament the loss of Royal Viking. None had ever been queried; all considered these ratings very misleading.

Just at the crucial moment of our search, a Regent brochure arrived outlining its Alaska programme. We’d been there so often, starting way back in 1954 when our parents took their two spoiled children on Canadian National’s Princupert <$>up the Inside Passage from Vancor.Once visited, both British Columbia and Alaska continue to lure you back and every few years we return for more in-depth exploration. This traveller had been on the 450-passenger Radisson Seven SeNavigator<$>, liked its size and service.The cruise line is a division of Carlson Travel and has now changed its identity from Radisson to Regent. First cruise of the season was 11 nights and ten days of sailing from San Francisco, with lots of time at sea, something we especially enjoy.

Most Alaska cruises tend to be seven nights and six days. One of the ports, Prince Rupert, British Columbia, hadn’t been visited since that first cruise to Alaska as youngsters and the nostalgia of a revisit was one of the things that attracted us to this cruise, along with its longer stay.

It’s to be applauded when a cruise line actually prints not only a picture of rooms in its brochure (hopefully not deceptively using a distorting wide- angle lens that makes it look bigger than it is), but lists footage of them and verandas as well.

We chose Penthouse suite 927 on Regent’s Seven Seas Mariner and it definitely lived up to expectations: A 376-square-feet suite and 73-square- foot balcony. Next category, same size included a butler and we like our privacy to the point we prefer not to be fussed over.

Exceptionally comfortable and spacious with lots of room, it actually could sleep four if one of the living room sofas was converted to a bed . . . and, in fact, was scheduled to do that next cruise.

With a walk-in closet, ample drawer space and entire walls of mirrors to capture spectacular passing scenery from every imaginable angle, it was the exact image of its brochure presentation. It was also very sound-proof.

But, frankly, the constant mantra that they were six-star and the world’s number one cruise ship soon became grating. Yes, certainly, a cruise where you paid $13,177 for a ten-day cruise (exclusive of getting there, etc.) definitely carries a luxury label. And, of course, it was special.

Every cruise is special. I’m happy that an enthusiasm for travel can still make a ferry ride in Hong Kong from Vancouver to Victoria, British Columbia still contain an element of excment.Perhaps<$> I’m not the best person to evaluate a ship’s rating because a lifetime of cruising on more than 60 ships has exposed me to enough variety to fill several books. And truly luxurious ships, such as, for example, Swedish America Line’s Kunglm and Gripsholm,<$> have sailed off into the sunset with their type never to be seen again.Like acclaimed lines of the past, they faded into mariners’ memory. Swedish America comes especially to mind since I grew up listening to a very favourite bachelor uncle tell tales about his around-the-world cruises on thI>Kungsholm <$>and later I cruised on the Gripsholm.

They chose to go out of business simply because of such an economic boom in Sweden’s economy, they could no longer staff their ships entirely with Swedish seamen, which was their choice.

Other lines chose another direction. We were on a Holland America Caribbean cruise when the switch was made from a Dutch-European crew to an Indonesian one and the resulting strike was something to remember.

But it’s worked out well for them and the many Indonesians we’ve met onboard have proved very capable, friendly and efficient.

But, sadly, what has evolved in today’s crew world is often a sort of indentured servitude, not too many steps away from a form of modern slavery.

At the risk of sounding like a reforming social worker, one can’t help but be touched with compassion at the plight of so many of them. We’ve been to most countries represented by crew, many of whom it’s very obvious are often desperately homesick and like to talk about their village.

They’re most often there, not for any love of the sea as in former days, but because desperate economic conditions in their third, fifth, tenth worlds have forced them to accept a position separating them from family.

Yes, there are some young adventurer types who see it as a way to explore the world in their youth.

But they’re not usually ones doing the dirty work, but more likely working in the spa or as entertainers.

Chatting with crew about their homeland, one learns the smiling Filipino delivering breakfast has been forced to leave a wife and three small children behind because there is no work for him at home.

“My son is one year old, and as I’m on a nine-month contract, he will be almost two before I see him again.”

Break that contract if things become unbearable and you’re stranded half way around the world.

Next Week: Cruising up the Inside Passage

Deciding on that cruise