Cruising is such fun, and then real life intercedes. For us, this happened yesterday.
We’d written a blog about Trygve Vorren, whom we met on the Norwegian Epic. We were told that he was a man of few words. His first language is Norwegian and, in English, he was shy. He is not always comfortable around strangers, and no ship in the NCL fleet carries more strangers (4,000-plus) than the mighty Epic.
In short, our interview with Captain Vorren would BE short.
We asked for 15 minutes. We wanted to talk about the ship, the man in charge of her and the cruise industry at large. We’d been fortunate to have dinner at the same table as the captain the night before the interview, so the ice was broken.
The interview lasted almost an hour and a half…not because of us, because of him. He regaled us, this man of few words, and we felt like we’d known him forever, or at least a long time.
When we met, he was one of two captains of the Epic, the biggest cruise ship in the world 
that doesn’t belong to Royal Caribbean. His home town was Stavanger on the west coast of Norway, a seaport not far from the Shetland Islands, but he had become Americanized, living in North Carolina, with two grown sons who live in Florida. All Norwegian ships have two captains and, yes, most of them are from Norway…19 of 22 at last count, with the others coming from Sweden, Finland and Greece.
As a young man, this captain was a fan of The Beatles and Elvis. He said he thought the music of the sixties and the seventies was better…other than perhaps Michael Jackson, and that in Europe in the sixties, it was all about the music. Everybody had favorite bands, and everybody liked disco. Music had become a big deal on cruise ships, especially among the young people, and he was witness to the evolution.
While all cruise lines are constantly trying to find ways to attract young people, Norwegian took the first step by introducing “freestyle cruising” which went a long way to eradicating the stuffy, rigid, tuxedo-wearing image of cruise ships (real or not). Captain Vorren was there for the beginning.
He was on the Norwegian Sea for some Christmas tours when NCL tried out the freestyle concept. He laughed about listening to the comments of the passengers, because this was the first ship with a bistro and the first on the high seas with a separate restaurant.
That toe-in-the-water experiment was followed by what was then full-blown freestyling on the Norwegian Sun and Captain Vorren was part of that, too. He said everybody wanted to see what it was all about, with the specialty restaurants and the coffee bars. It took some time before it was accepted in the industry, but it became popular quite quickly. It took a few years to get it right, schedule things in the right way, and the captain believed NCL was different for the time being, that most cruise lines would soon be introducing some form of freestyle cruising. It would just take a few years.
Yesterday, real life was getting word that Trygve Vorren passed away from cancer and surgical complications in August. The cruise world is worse off without him…the whole word is worse off without him.
DAILY DEAL:
Radiance of the Seas
12 nights
April 22, 2012
Honolulu to Vancouver
Inside $1,748
www.royalcaribbean.com