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2019

2019 Land, sand, sea and Spain

It started out like any other year for Sixthman – lots of back-to-back Caribbean cruises starting in January and continuing through March. We took on several returning events, and added some new faces to our roster with Kesha’s Weird and Wonderful Rainbow Ride, our third-ever TV-show based event with the Trailer Park Boys, and welcomed Melissa Etheridge and Jon Bon Jovi to the Sixthman artist host family.

After a running start, our year became drastically different as we took on new challenges with Resort Festivals and Europe! Kid Rock returned, but this time brought his Flyin' High Island Jam to the Dominican Republic at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. Then our staff headed overseas for the first time in Sixthman history, bringing our floating festivals to an entire new audience, including an all-new crowd for us with Belle and Sebastian’s Boaty Weekender. We also explored Europe with some familiar faces by bringing Joe Bonamassa and Jon Bon Jovi's already-established events across the Atlantic. We hit the sand once again in November for the inaugural All The Best Fest with John Prine at Breathless + Now Onyx Resort. And that's the story of how we completed 19 events in 2019! 

  • The Outlaw Country Cruise
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  • The Rock Boat XIX
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  • Impractical Jokers Cruise
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  • Cayamo
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  • Kesha's Rainbow Ride
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  • Walker Stalker Cruise
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  • Blues Alive At Sea
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  • 311 Caribbean Cruise VI
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  • Trailer Park Boys Cruise
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  • The Melissa Etheridge Cruise
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  • Runaway to Paradise Caribbean
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  • Kid Rock Beach
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  • The Boaty Weekender
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  • Blues Alive at Sea Mediterranean
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  • Runaway to Paradise Mediterranean
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  • The KISS Kruise IX
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  • Brantley Gilbert Cruise
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  • All The Best Fest

2018

2018 Conquered the quest to 1 million

Over the years, we’ve kept track of how many days we spend at sea as a company – and we encourage our guests to do the same! We call it Saltiness, and if you’ve ever sailed with us, you can find the information in your Sixthman account. We’ve had our sights set on conquering that huge “1 Million Days at Sea” milestone for years, and we finally hit it onboard the 18th sailing of The Rock Boat. We also encouraged our guests to share their personal number of days at sea with us all season.

Our spring roster consisted of all returning events once again, and we brought two brand new festivals to life in our Fall season, first with Brantley Gilbert’s Kick It In The Ship Cruise, followed by Chris Jericho’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling Rager at Sea, featuring the first-ever wrestling ring at sea! Not to mention, both of these gave all of our other events a run for their money when it comes to cruise name length.

  • The Outlaw Country Cruise
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  • Walker Stalker Cruise
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  • The Rock Boat XVIII
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  • Cayamo
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  • Blues Alive at Sea IV (2018)
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  • Pitbull After Dark Party
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  • Sail Across the Sun
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  • PARAHOY!
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  • Kid Rock Cruise
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  • Brantley Gilbert Cruise
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  • Chris Jericho Cruise
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  • The KISS Kruise VIII

2017

2017 Two ships and a dream

Over the past several years, Norwegian Pearl had truly become our home away from home, and we continued to make modifications and staging improvements so it was even more suitable for our events. However, Norwegian Jade, the Pearl’s sister ship, was relocated to Tampa and became a brand new venue option for us. There were a few differences, but the majority of the ship was the same footprint and Norwegian agreed to outfit the ship similarly to the Pearl, giving us two ships to choose from when producing our festivals. We were able to use both ships throughout our season – and for the first time ever, we had a “changeover day” in two different cities. The disembarkation for the Walker Stalker Cruise in Miami was the same day as the embarkation of Keeping The Blues Alive at Sea in Tampa. Obviously we had to dive into some crazy new logistical planning to pull that off, but we made it happen! We added one new event in the Spring with Pitbull’s After Dark Party, and the rest of our Spring events were returning favorites. We proudly celebrated Cayamo’s 10th sailing in February, and we also hit a major company-wide milestone on that same sailing by completing our 100th festival at sea! The fall brought one more brand-new festival our way with Warped Rewind at Sea, a new partnership with Vans Warped Tour.

  • Walker Stalker Cruise
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  • Blues Alive At Sea III (2017)
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  • The Rock Boat XVII
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  • Sail Across the Sun
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  • Cayamo
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  • The Outlaw Country Cruise
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  • 311 Caribbean Cruise
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  • Pitbull After Dark Party
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  • Kid Rock Cruise
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  • Warped Rewind at Sea
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  • Impractical Jokers Cruise
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  • The KISS Kruise VII

2016

2016 Expanding our reach

For over a decade, we’ve pioneered the festival cruising industry and have continued raising the bar across the board. So what happens when we expand into industries beyond music, our tried and true? In 2016, we found out as we took the leap by jumping into the realms of entertainment and sports. Brand new to the Sixthman roster, The Impractical Jokers CruiseWalker Stalker Cruise, and Gronk’s Party Ship made their inaugural journeys across the Caribbean. New communities were formed and we learned even better ways to serve our guests through a different scope. We also added one new music festival to our roster with the first-ever Outlaw Country Cruise, a partnership with Sirius XM's Outlaw Country. We finished out our spring season with six returning festivals - all full ships. We headed back out to sea in the fall for a short one-cruise “season” as we celebrated our 6th sailing with The Hottest Band in the World, KISS!

  • Impractical Jokers Cruise
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  • Walker Stalker Cruise
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  • The Rock Boat XVI
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  • Cayamo
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  • The Outlaw Country Cruise
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  • Sail Across the Sun
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  • Blues Alive at Sea II (2016)
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  • Gronk's Party Ship
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  • PARAHOY!
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  • Kid Rock Cruise
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  • The KISS Kruise VI

2015

2015 New office, new beginnings

As we entered a new year, we found ourselves getting settled into a brand new office. The team members that we’d brought on months prior had gone from timid toe-dippers, to salty sailors eager to explore greater depths of our expanding company. Based on what we learned in 2014, we scaled back the number of events with the intention of working smarter, not harder. The Rock Boat hit the high seas for it’s milestone 15th voyage, and we introduced another new event, Blues Alive at Sea with Joe Bonnamassa. Our CEO, Andy Levine, joined the Sixthman Home Team for the first time ever and remained on land during the first round of cruises, leaving the events in the capable hands of his team. When he sailed later on in the season as a guest, we didn’t believe he’d stay hands-off and actually enjoy a much-needed vacation…he proved us all wrong!

After the end of a successful spring season, we headed back to Atlanta to give our sea legs a much needed break. The recently launched Sixthman Sessions gained a great deal of momentum during the next few months as bands from all over the country graced our new office stage with live performances during the work day. October arrived like a freight train and we suddenly found ourselves aboard Norwegian Pearl ready to blow our final three events of 2015 out of the water.

  • Sandy Beaches Cruise 21 -
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  • Cayamo
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  • The Rock Boat XV
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  • Sail Across the Sun
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  • Blues Alive at Sea I (2015)
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  • 311 Caribbean Cruise
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  • Kid Rock Cruise
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  • The KISS Kruise V
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  • Florida Georgia Line Cruise
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  • Mad Decent Boat Party

2014

2014 Back to back to back to back

One of the unanswered questions in our industry is this: What is the growth potential if we were to have a partner to invest with us, allowing us to take more risk? At the beginning of 2014, Norwegian brought a new ship to Miami and the Norwegian Pearl was available for an 8 week window between January and March, so we took it. We produced our annual cruises and added some new ones that we had been curious about over the years. Our new additions included Sail Across The Sun with Train, Progressive Nation at Sea and PARAHOY with Paramore. We gained a new partner with Delbert McClinton's team and helped them produce the 20th Sandy Beaches Cruise, and we experimented with programming the entertainment on a normal Norwegian sailing with the first-ever LIVE LOUD Festival. We probably bit off more than we could chew. But we learned a ton about executing back-to-back festivals and finding the amount of new cruises that we could successfully nurture each year. After taking some time to rest and reset, we prepared ourselves for the fall cruise season and introduced the world to two new events; Florida Georgia Line’s: This Is How We Cruise and Mad Decent Boat Party. Both events were highly successful, creating two new communities we loved serving. But with new beginnings came the end of an era as the 8th Simple Man Cruise with Lynyrd Skynyrd made its final voyage, closing out the fall season of 2014 with fond memories and bittersweet farewells.

  • Sandy Beaches Cruise 20 -
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  • Mountain Song At Sea
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  • Cayamo
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  • Sail Across the Sun
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  • Progressive Nation at Sea
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  • The Rock Boat XIV
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  • LIVE LOUD Festival
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  • Kid Rock Cruise
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  • PARAHOY!
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  • The KISS Kruise IV
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  • GRAMMY Festival at Sea
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  • Florida Georgia Line Cruise
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  • Mad Decent Boat Party
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  • Simple Man Cruise

2013

2013 The beat goes on

Norwegian made investments in the Norwegian Pearl to make it more “Music Cruise Friendly” and we moved all of our cruises over in 2013. It was nice to be such a priority on board and be able to work closer with the ship to deliver a world class experience to our guests and artists. While our guests preferred the Norwegian Pearl, there were little things that they missed from other ships we had used. We worked quickly to identify those things and fill the gaps to make it a better vacation overall. We realized the ship had 1200 crew members and we only showed up with 80 staff to work alongside them for each Sixthman sailing, and finding ways to allow them to be more engaged made a huge difference. There are 14 of them for every one of us, so we appreciated them having the enthusiasm needed to make our festivals happen. This year we added two new festivals to our lineup - ALABAMA Festival at Sea and our first bluegrass event, Mountain Song at Sea.

  • Cayamo
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  • Mountain Song at Sea
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  • The Rock Boat XIII
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  • 311 Caribbean Cruise
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  • Kid Rock Cruise
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  • Simple Man Cruise
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  • ALABAMA Festival at Sea
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  • The KISS Kruise III
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  • Rombello

2012

2012 The missing puzzle piece

In the summer of 2011, we were approached by Norwegian Cruise Line to become a part of their family via an acquisition. After months of discussions and negotiations, we agreed to become a Norwegian owned subsidiary in February of 2012. We produced 8 cruises in 2012. It was less than 2011, but our roster was strong -  The Rock Boat, Simple Man Cruise, KISS Kruise, 311 Cruise, Cayamo, TCM and Kid Rock Cruise were all solid, recurring annual events. We wrapped up our 3-year stint with Graceland, our partners for the Elvis Cruises, and also enjoyed the adventure of bringing the 1st Weezer Cruise to life. This year, we were finally able to bring The Rock Boat back to New Orleans, after our "unfinished business" there in 2005 due to Hurricane Katrina.

  • The Elvis Cruise
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  • The Weezer Cruise
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  • Cayamo
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  • The Rock Boat XII
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  • Kid Rock Cruise
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  • 311 Caribbean Cruise
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  • Simple Man Cruise
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  • The KISS Kruise II

Sixthman Sessions

2011

2011 Moving in the right direction

Kid Rock and VH1 returned for their 2nd year and we were fortunate to be able to start partnerships with 311, KISS and Turner Classic Movies to create new festivals. 311’s fans crashed our servers for the first time ever during their presale signups, but the band and their excitable fans created the most amazing, energy-filled atmosphere for any Sail Away Show we had ever witnessed. KISS attracted fans from 30 countries and performed a 2 hour "unmasked and unplugged" set for their first Sail Away Show. Our first film festival with TCM gave us a chance to work with Celebrity Cruise Line and earn our first non-music driven sold out cruise.

After our spring events ended, we worked with our new sponsor, Cabo Wabo Tequila to plan Sixthman's Summer Road Trip, our second-ever bus tour. We loved the idea of bringing some artist favorites from the cruises to guests in their hometowns!

  • The Rock Boat XI
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  • Simple Man Cruise
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  • Ships and Dip 4 -
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  • Cayamo
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  • 311 Caribbean Cruise
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  • Kid Rock Cruise
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  • VH1 Best Cruise Ever
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  • Rombello
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  • The KISS Kruise I
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  • TCM Classic Cruise

Sixthman's Summer Road Trip · Sixthman Sessions

2010

2010 Getting stronger in more ways than one

After holding at 5-6 festivals a year in 2008 and 2009 to build our foundation and process, we had the opportunity to take on new events in 2010. We moved all but two cruises to Tampa and spread them out over 5 months to give ourselves a better chance for success. We brought the VH1Zac Brown Band and Kid Rock cruises to life for the first time and we also ventured into lifestyle cruising with a Jillian Michaels Cruise.  One highlight during this year was when Kid Rock decided to get on the Ship’s PA System at 1:30 in the morning to invite all the guests up to the pool deck for a party while he DJ’d for 3 hours. We also achieved a milestone by celebrating the 10th Rock Boat, which was still going strong as our flagship event.

  • The Rock Boat X
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  • Simple Man Cruise
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  • Cayamo
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  • VH1 Best Cruise Ever
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  • Kid Rock Cruise
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  • Malt Shop Memories
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  • Sailing Southern Ground
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  • Ultimate Wellness Cruise
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  • The Elvis Cruise

Sixthman Sessions

2009

2009 Now we groovin'

We applied our lessons from 2008 and were able to execute the Simple Man Cruise, The Rock Boat, Ships & Dip, Cayamo and Mayercraft Carrier to our standards. We had only worked with Carnival in the past but selected Norwegian Cruise Line to host two of our cruises this year. The idea of going to a new cruise line was daunting but our team did an excellent job. Getting to work with two different cruise lines helped us learn much quicker and would end up being worth the extra work to build relationships and understand two styles. This was also the first time we jumped up to bigger ships, going from 2,200 person capacity ships to 2,800 person capacity ships. Our team used the term “huggable” to describe the difference between the smaller ships and the bigger ships. We felt like somewhere in the 2,500 person range, it lost a little bit of intimacy. Since then, we've mainly used the smaller ships because it felt like more of a "huggable" family.

That fall, we added one more new event to the roster with The Elvis Cruise, a partnership with Elvis Presley Enterprises.  

  • Simple Man Cruise
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  • The Rock Boat IX
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  • Ships and Dip V -
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  • Cayamo
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  • Mayercraft Carrier
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  • The Elvis Cruise

Rock Fore! Dough · Sixthman Sessions

2008

2008 SOS we did too much

With 10 months to prepare, we felt that producing 5 cruises in one month was doable. In the end, it nearly brought us to our knees. The funny thing about our experience is that we were constantly in a position with our guests where we were asking them for a chance to make something right. While it took a huge emotional and physical toll on all of us, that experience had a profound impact on how we would prepare, staff and anticipate our guests' needs in the future. It’s almost like we had to go through that to see what we were made of. It also allowed our guests to see what we were made of. We never gave up and did not rest until all our guests were back on track. We still reflect back on this year as the one that defined what our recipe needed to be in order to grow without compromising the quality of the experience. Our new cruises this year, Cayamo and Mayercraft Carrier, proved to be great experiences and both signed on again for the following year.  At the end of 2008, Sixthman had outgrown the little yellow house we used as an office since 2004, and moved into a bigger space next to the Zoo in Atlanta.