The World, A condominium oceanliner

It must be a growth industry! The cruise ships get larger and longer and higher and the amenities proliferate like fruit flies! Now, ships like The World, whose time has apparently come, are floating condominiums with a permanent cliental that are citizens of the world at large! Living aboard all or part of the time, visiting and observing the sights of the world by water. Wow! The World moored off our little, possibly exotic to some, certainly funky to many, island in the Salish Sea. There are no docking facilities for boats of cruise ship size on Lotus Island, so The World anchored out a mile and a half from the the town in Ganges Harbour. We locals and yokels spent the weekend gawking at her! The ship's tender plyed the water back and forth on an hourly basis with its condo cargo as they visited the town, and the market, all weekend. They have licked their lips, those sellers in the trinket market, but the passenger-owners were here to simply absorb the bucolic atmosphere. Lotus Island is not a destination for the Isla Cozumel crowd, two weeks and home. We may have arrived for bucolic viewing, but no Mardi Gras like ambience exists as a destination for the lively. I guess cruising ship condominium-owners would be older and more sedate than the two week bunch. A battle anew about our role in the tourist industry is about to occur with the Nimbys and the Progressives . The Progressives will prevail. Money, like water, flows to the lowest level. I am not self rightous. I like money and water too, but Eco Tourism is what we have been largely all about. Our strong point! How much to sacrifice to get the right balance? Those of us who live here and have done so for a long time have deep roots. We are not exactly spectators. We are the inspected. I'm not really sure that a condominium on the ocean ,with many ports of call, and a rootless existence is all that appealing. Shubert wrote of Der Wanderer. Says the song "Where are you my beloved land?" I can answer that because I am a 'stick in the mud'!