Of course, this particular yacht is a little different from the one your average weekend sailor fantasizes about. It has six decks, the top three of which are clad in teak harvested from ecologically correct plantations in Indonesia. There are three massage rooms, a golf simulator on which you can play video-enhanced rounds at Pebble Beach, two outdoor bars, and a fully outfitted gym with panoramic views. You can enjoy breakfast in bed and dinner prepared by a staff of eleven, including a saucier and a pastry chef who makes his own ice creams using crème fraîche. The SeaDream I sailed from Venice with thirty cases of champagne, five cases of Château Margaux, thirty pounds of foie gras, ten pounds of caviar, and eight hundred pounds of oranges to provide SeaDreamers with their fresh-squeezed juice each morning. "Oh, I don't think we'll go hungry on this trip," said a courtly gentleman from Glen Rock, New Jersey, as we leaned on the rail with our freshly mixed mojitos, watching the coral-colored facades of Venice slide gently by in the early-evening sun. I'd come aboard at exactly two that afternoon and, after being given a cool, antiseptic towelette and a flute of champagne, had found my stateroom down a narrow, blue-carpeted hallway lined with gold railings designed to steady SeaDreamers in heavy seas. The room had cornflower-blue curtains, a double bed fitted with the finest Italian linens, and a television that broadcast a steady stream of German MTV. The marble bath was filled with beauty products by Bulgari, and there was a bottle of champagne on ice. Instead of a tiny, sea sprayswept porthole, I could gaze out a picture window at the endlessly changing panorama of land, sea, and sky.

Before we even left Venice, passengers were camped out on the Balinese daybeds on the upper deck, turning nut brown in the late-afternoon sun. There were captains of industry and university professors and rapacious entertainment lawyers. The actress Daryl Hannah was traveling with a rabble of boisterous relatives to celebrate her mother's birthday. A New York media executive named Henry Schleiff was touring the Greek Isles with his loquacious wife, Peggy. "You have your risk takers, who like a certain kind of travel experience, and you have your researchers, who always find themselves the best of everything. And then you have us," Peggy would tell me, as we sipped tall lemonade spritzers somewhere off the coast of Croatia. "We're the lazy people. We go to the Hamptons in the summertime. We go to the Four Seasons Nevis every Christmas. Henry loves his golf rituals. Henry does not like risk. We thought cruising was something we could do. It's like CliffsNotes for travelers."

Which did not seem like such a bad thing as the great yacht steamed past the Piazza San Marco, turned left at the entrance to the Grand Canal, and sailed out into the lagoon. Soon, the church towers Cruising Europe of the city disappeared from view and the water was filled with little skiffs and fishing smacks. On the islands closer to the open sea, we could see children riding their bikes along the shore, and then, as we cleared the tip of the Lido, the milky green water of the lagoon gave way to a deep Adriatic blue. I dined outside that first evening, listening to the thrum of the ship's engines, watching a tall line of clouds turn pink in the sunset. Dinner was grilled tuna, I dimly recall, followed by a fluffy soufflé spiked with Grand Marnier. I took one bite of soufflé, then another, and as I put down my spoon a dolphin jumped off the ship's stern, as if on cue.