Editor’s note: TPG’s Gene Sloan accepted a free trip from Seabourn to get an early look at Seabourn Pursuit. The opinions expressed below are entirely his and weren’t subject to review by the line.
Are you looking for a cruise ship that can take you to the most remote places in the world in style? Seabourn Pursuit will surely be on your short list of candidates.
Unveiled in August by Seabourn, one of the world’s best-known luxury lines, Seabourn Pursuit is a small and agile expedition ship designed to visit such hard-to-reach and rugged destinations as Antarctica and Australia’s Kimberley coast. It’s also a luxury ship that delivers some of the highest levels of service and pampering at sea.
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As I saw during a recent 10-night voyage in the Kimberley region, Seabourn Pursuit combines some of the best attributes of both expedition ships and traditional luxury ships to offer an unusually upscale adventure experience.
The biggest caveat to picking this ship: It doesn’t come cheap. Suites on the vessel — and every cabin is a suite — often start at around $2,000 per day.
Overview of Seabourn Pursuit GENE SLOAN/THE POINTS GUY
Seabourn Pursuit is one of the world’s newest and most elegant expedition ships.
Like all expedition ships, it’s specifically designed and equipped to get travelers to remote and hard-to-reach places like Antarctica that most people never get to see.
For starters, it’s built to be inordinately tough. Its strengthened hull allows it to bump through ice in polar regions, and its unusually large fuel tanks and food storage areas allow it to operate for long periods in remote areas without reprovisioning.
Additionally, it travels with its own landing craft — small rubber Zodiac boats — to get passengers ashore in remote areas. It also carries other adventure gear for exploring remote areas, including kayaks, snorkeling equipment and scuba gear, and it has two submarines for exploring deep underwater.
Related: Expedition cruises: The ultimate guide to cruising to remote, hard-to-reach places
As is typical for expedition ships, Seabourn Pursuit travels with a large expedition team of experts on the places it goes. The members of the team lead landings and lecture on board.
While small compared to most cruise ships, including Seabourn’s five traditional luxury ships, Seabourn Pursuit is relatively large for an expedition ship at 23,615 gross tons — something that has both advantages and disadvantages when it comes to operating expedition-style trips.
Twice the size of the latest expedition vessels built for such expedition cruise leaders as Lindblad Expeditions and Quark Expeditions, it offers a wider array of eateries, lounges and other onboard venues than is typical for such a vessel. But its bigger size also comes with a capacity for more passengers, which can be a drawback when operating expedition-style landings in remote areas.
Seabourn Pursuit is the second of two nearly identical expedition ships that Seabourn has launched over the past two years as it moves into the expedition cruising space for the first time. The first vessel in the series, Seabourn Venture, also sails to remote parts of the world, including Antarctica and the Arctic.
What I loved about Seabourn Pursuit Its elegant and upscale onboard experience GENE SLOAN/THE POINTS GUY
Seabourn Pursuit offers an elegant and upscale onboard experience that is unlike almost anything else found in the expedition cruise space. Its onboard venues, including its restaurants, lounges and spa, are beautifully designed, as is typical for Seabourn ships. It also sails with an extraordinarily high ratio of crew to passengers, allowing for high service levels (on my sailing, the ratio was exactly one-to-one, with 238 crew and 238 passengers).
Essentially, what Seabourn has done with Seabourn Pursuit is create an expedition ship that mimics the luxury feel of its traditional ocean ships. Or, to put it another way, Seabourn Pursuit is a luxury ship with all the adventure-focused trappings of expedition cruising overlaid on top.
This is relatively unusual in the expedition cruise space. Some of the best-known luxury cruise operators, including Regent Seven Seas Cruises and Crystal, don’t operate expedition ships. Those that do, such as Silversea Cruises, don’t always operate expedition vessels that are as elegant and upscale in feel, in part because they sometimes are older vessels.
Its always available caviar BELINDA LUKSIC FOR THE POINTS GUY
Speaking of elegant and upscale, one of the wonderful little luxury touches on Seabourn Pursuit is that you can order caviar to your room or anywhere else you happen to be on the ship at any time, day or night. There’s no extra charge. It’s a small thing, but it speaks to the luxury level you’ll get when sailing on Seabourn Pursuit. Just note that Seabourn doesn’t advertise this much on board, presumably because of the cost. You sort of have to be in the know (and now you are, so … order away).
What I didn’t love about Seabourn Pursuit The high passenger count
Seabourn Pursuit can carry up to 264 passengers — a large number in the expedition cruise ship space. The newest ships from two of the best-known expedition cruise operators, Lindblad Expeditions and Ponant, by contrast, carry just 126 passengers and 184 passengers, respectively. New ships from Aurora Expeditions are built to hold 132 people. In expedition cruising, this sort of differential in passenger capacity is a big deal. It can make a considerable difference in the quality of the expedition cruise experience.
The more passengers an expedition ship has on board, the more its expedition guides have to break them up into separate groups for landings, slowing down the process of exploring at any single landing site. The result is that passengers on smaller ships often get to see more wildlife and scenery up close than passengers on bigger ships. This is particularly true in polar destinations such as Antarctica, where passenger landings are restricted to 100 people at a time.
Related: Is this the ultimate Antarctica cruise ship? Our take on Lindblad’s National Geographic Resolution
Seabourn built Seabourn Pursuit larger than many existing expedition ships in part to offer passengers the same sort of luxury experience that they get on the line’s traditional ocean ships. The ship had to be bigger to make room for all the upscale venues, including multiple restaurants and lounges that Seabourn passengers expect. But in expedition cruising, sailing on a smaller vessel with fewer people is its own type of luxury.
Seabourn Pursuit cabins and suites GENE SLOAN/THE POINTS GUY
Picking a room on Seabourn Pursuit isn’t as complicated as it is on some ships. There is basically just one main cabin category that accounts for the vast majority of the 132 accommodations on board: the Veranda Suite.
On paper, there are five categories of Veranda Suites, but all the rooms in these categories — 101 in all — are basically the same, with the only difference between them being their location. Higher-category Veranda Suites are toward the middle of the ship, which is considered more desirable. Lower-category Veranda Suites are toward the front of the ship.
My cabin was one of the lower-category Veranda Suites toward the front of Deck 6, and just like the higher-category Veranda Suites, it measured 355 square feet — a generous amount for an expedition ship cabin. That space included a 78-square-foot balcony area, the same as you’ll find with higher-category Veranda Suites.
As with all Veranda Suites, my room featured a queen-size bed that could be split into two twin beds, a built-in cabinet and wall-mounted TV opposite the bed and an adjacent seating area with a sofa, a chair and a built-in desk. There was also a walk-in closet and a bathroom.
Decor-wise, it was a lovely cabin with all the high-end finishings and amenities you would expect on a luxury ship. The look was contemporary and residential, with synthetic walnut and bronze cabinetry topped with expensive marble, quality bone white furnishings, patterned mocha and bone carpeting and walls covered in faux parchment.
I particularly liked the custom bedside panels with perfectly placed built-in bedside lights and foldaway reading lamps controlled by vintagelike toggle switches. The bed itself was opulent, with a super-comfortable mattress and high-end sheets. Each side of the bed was topped with three large white pillows that, from top to bottom, were extra firm, firm and soft (as explained on a pillow menu). Two red patterned throws and a sumptuous faux fur pillow rounded out the high-end look.
Among thoughtful touches to the room were its heated compartment for fast-drying wet clothing after Zodiac landings and Swarovski Optik binoculars to borrow during the voyage. A minibar was also stocked with almost any drink I wanted. (Though the one drink I wanted most in my cabin, a morning coffee, was unavailable. Unlike many cabins on high-end ships, the room had no espresso maker.)
Seabourn Pursuit suites have heated cabinets for drying wet boots and clothing after landings. GENE SLOAN/THE POINTS GUY
On a practical note, the room was loaded with power outlets of all sorts — enough to keep even the most device-laden traveler fully charged. The bedside panels on both sides of the bed had both U.S.-style 110-volt and European-style 220-volt outlets, as well as two USB ports (alas, there were no fast-charging USB-C ports, something that is increasingly standard on new ships). More outlets and USB ports were located at the desk area and above the cabinet across from the bed.
If there was a flaw to the room’s design, it was its storage space, which seemed to take a back seat to the overall look. The built-in cabinet across from the bed was stylish but too narrow to be practical. The desk across from the sofa lacked drawers that would have made it more functional — no doubt to keep its minimalist line.
Each Veranda Suite comes with a walk-in closet. GENE SLOAN/THE POINTS GUY
More notably, perhaps, the room’s walk-in closet was just a tad too narrow to be fully functional. It offered lots of room for hanging clothes on one side but was light on shelving for sweaters, folded shirts and the like — the result of a significant amount of its space having been left open so that passengers could walk into it. A less elegant but more practical use of this block of space would have been to forgo the idea of a walk-in closet and create large built-in wardrobes that opened from the outside.
The same sort of style-over-practicality in design was evident in the bathroom. It was a beautiful space with marble tile walls and floors, a built-in marble vanity and high-end Grohe fixtures, but it wasn’t optimally designed for function. Despite being larger than the typical cruise ship bathroom, it had a comically tiny shower (so tiny it was an exercise in contortion to soap up) and lacked a single drawer for hiding away toiletries. The only storage was three impractically small and narrow shelves to the side of the vanity and several hard-to-reach shelves tucked under the corners of the vanity.
The bathroom also contained a bathtub that few people would use. A bathtub is a nice touch when there is room for one, but in this case, there wasn’t. The bathtub ate up the space that could have allowed for a bigger shower — something everyone expects these days.
For those who want something more spacious than a standard Veranda Suite such as mine (and are willing to pay significantly more for the privilege), Seabourn Pursuit also has more than two dozen larger suites — a few truly spectacular.
The most over-the-top suites on the ship, by far, are its two Wintergarden Suites. Measuring a whopping 1,175 square feet, they are two-story-high apartments that each have an expansive living area on their lower floors and a stunning bedroom with a bed facing floor-to-ceiling glass walls on their upper floors. Both of the suites can be combined with an adjacent Veranda Suite to create an even larger two-bedroom complex that measures 1,605 square feet.
Also spectacular are the ship’s two rear-facing Signature Suites, which fill up the entire back of Deck 8. Each of the suites measures 1,380 square feet, not including its balcony, and has a massive living area overlooking the ship’s wake in addition to a bedroom. Each also has a seemingly endless wraparound balcony with its own Jacuzzi and elegant lounge furniture.
Related: Ditch the polar gear: 7 warm-weather expedition cruises that will wow nature and adventure lovers
Two more larger suites on the ship are its Owners Suites, which measure 1,023 square feet, including balcony space. Located at the front of the vessel, they also have large living areas separate from their bedrooms.
Two other categories of suites on Seabourn Pursuit that are larger than the standard Veranda Suites but not nearly as big as the Wintergarden, Signature and Owners suites are its nine Penthouse Suites and 16 Panorama Veranda Suites. These two categories of rooms measure 527 square feet and 417 square feet, respectively, including their balcony space.
Seabourn Pursuit restaurants and bars
As is typical for small ships, Seabourn Pursuit has just a handful of eateries. Still, it manages to offer a wide range of cuisines with rotating theme nights in one of its restaurants. Several bars and lounges offer a diversity of drink choices.
Restaurants
Seabourn Pursuit has two main restaurants: The Restaurant and The Colonnade.
The Restaurant is the more formal of the two, offering a fine dining experience in a stylish space filled with custom-designed, modern Italian furniture and bronze-framed wine displays.
The Restaurant on Seabourn Pursuit. GENE SLOAN/THE POINTS GUY
Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, The Restaurant offers classic cuisine such as eggs Benedict in the morning and grilled snapper and beef tenderloin in the evening.
The Colonnade is a more casual alternative eatery that offers a buffet service for breakfast and lunch (augmented with some a la carte menu items that you can order from your waiter). It then transforms into a waiter-served sit-down restaurant at dinnertime.
The Colonnade’s cuisine at dinner changes daily, offering passengers a more diverse dining experience in the evenings than one might expect from a ship with just two restaurants. One night, it’ll have a French focus, the next, Spanish. When I was on board, nights devoted to Australian, Thai, Italian and American cuisines were also on the schedule.
Additionally, on several nights of each cruise, The Colonnade morphs into a pop-up eatery called Earth & Ocean that offers an eclectic mix of dishes inspired by the places the ship visits around the world.
The Colonnade has both indoor and outdoor seating, with the outdoor area known as The Patio. Seabourn touts The Patio in its marketing material as a separate eatery, but it’s not really.
In addition to the above, passengers will find sushi made to order every evening in The Club, one of the ship’s bars. A nod to the popular sushi eateries found on Seabourn’s bigger ships, the sushi dishes at The Club can be something you order as an appetizer before heading to The Restaurant or The Colonnade for dinner, or they can be your full meal. Just note the sushi menu is relatively limited.
You’ll also find quick grab-and-go bites available during the day in The Bow Lounge, a small, unstaffed lounge space overlooking the ship’s bow. It has a refrigerator stocked with small portions of salads and wraps in glass containers. The Bow Lounge also has a self-serve espresso machine for cappuccinos, lattes and other espresso drinks.
Additional small bites are available throughout the day at Seabourn Square, a living roomlike lounge space that is..