March 15, 2004 – Thanks to coordination by former St. John resident James St. John, the Love City Pan Dragons got paid to play for about an hour aboard a cruise ship anchored in Cruz Bay.
"The ship was really big," Marcus Andrews, 9, a Guy Benjamin School student and Pan Dragon pannist, said.
Marcus and about two dozen of his fellow Pan Dragon members played tunes including "Music in the Blood" and "The Melody Sweet" for the ship's passengers on Thursday, the second of two days the vessel spent anchored off St. John.
"The people loved their music," Corrine Matthias, Marcus's mother, related on Monday.
The World is a floating condominium that follows a course around the globe. The ship started the year in Antarctica, stopping next at South and Central American ports before visiting Mexico, Florida and the Bahamas. The Caribbean came next, with visits to the Dominica Republic and Puerto Rico.
From St. John, its only stop in the territory, it headed on to Virgin Gorda and then on to St. Kitts. It's scheduled to end the year at South Africa.
The World, which is 644 feet in length, carries an average of 320 residents and guests in 198 studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units. Some passengers own their units; others contract to stay as long as they like they might do for the short-term rental of condo units on land. For the section of the cruise that included St. John section, studios cost $650 a night, with two- and three-bedroom units starting at $2,000 a night.
The ship, registered in the Bahamas, is operated by ResidenSea.
Jim St. John is the company president. Back in the 1980s, he was general manager of the Virgin Grand St. John Hotel, now the Westin Resort and Villas.
"He's now doing at sea what he used to do on land," Elaine Penn, who helped organize the event, said.
She said St. John contacted her about the possibility of the youth group performing when the ship called at St. John. "They were looking for a steelband and called us," she said.
The performance did take some organization. They put the pans in a truck and a car, put the vehicles on a barge, and headed out to the ship. The barge tied up at the stern, making it easy to offload the pans.
The kids were take to the ship by tender. In addition to performing, they had a tour of the vessel and then dinner aboard. "Veggie pizza and a drink," Marcus said, delighted with the World's menu.
Penn said the youngsters wore their new Pan Dragon polo shirts — white with a pan dragon stitched on the front — with black pants. She declined to say what the Pan Dragons group got paid for the performance but said it was substantial. The money will go to fund Pan Dragon operations and projects, she said.
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