We were on a Wind Star cruise in Fall, 2005 from Barcelona to Lisbon. We've also sailed the Wind Spirit in the Caribbean.

If you have only ever cruised on big mainline ships before, these are going to be very different. For one thing there are only 130+ passengers on the Star and the Spirit, and 300+ on the Surf (I think, I haven't sailed that one).

We were under sail every night in the Med - and it is fantastic. We ran into some rather rough weather on the last night sailing around Portugal, but that was due to one of those late hurricanes that cropped up. The rest of the time was absolutely beautiful. And if you're at al interested in what goes on in the bridge, they have an open bridge policy which means you can go in and chat with whoever is on duty. (It was interesting, when we were in the Caribbean last year we were sailing during a meteor shower, they were able to look it up and tell us which one it was and how many days we could expect it to last. Since there were very few lights around, we had quite a show!)

There wasn't much in the way of entertainment at night (other than meteor showers ) - if you're looking for a flashy show, you won't get it. But the food was fine, the service was great, the cabin pretty comfortable for the Med Cruise. Windstar has refurbished the cabins - we noticed the changes on the Caribbean cruise - and are doing more refurbishments this spring so the ships should be pretty nice by this summer.

But - these ships have also apparently just been sold. I have no idea what that will mean for the future. I say that if you can sail this summer, do it.