What cruise ship is in Aruba right now?

Last week I wrote about www.sailwx.info, a website that allows you to track the current positions of cruise ships around the world. This week I've learned about another new site, Seascanner for Google Earth, that allows you to track the exact positions of various cruise ships and track down a considerable amount of other information about them as well.

First, go to www.seascanner.com, click on the "Ships" tab, and then click on the link that says "show current positions of ships in google earth." (If you don't have google earth downloaded on your computer, you can do so at this site for free.) You'll be brought to a globe (which you can turn by clicking on the navigational tool in the upper right-hand corner) showing the positions of cruise ships belonging to Costa, Celebrity, Cunard, MSC, Royal Caribbean, and several other cruise lines (not including Carnival and some other popular lines, however).

Click on the symbols to find a particular ship and where it is located at this exact moment. For instance, when I checked a few minutes ago, I found that Royal Caribbean's Jewel of the Seas was en route from Cozumel to Costa Maya, Mexico, and would dock there in 19 minutes. (It should be docking just about now, as I write this.) Meanwhile, Celebrity's Constellation is docked in Bridgetown, Barbados, for the next seven hours before setting out for St. Kitts during a 10-day voyage out of Ft. Lauderdale.

Not only is this info great for daydreamers, it's excellent for tracking the progress of family members or friends who are off cruising (as I'm sure we'd all like to be).

Once you pull up information about the ship, you can click through to find itineraries for that same ship for the rest of 2007 and well into 2008. You can also get pricing information on those voyages, though rates are listed in euros, not dollars. Seascanner also has a feature allowing you to click on a particular port most anywhere in the world to see which ships include it in their upcoming itineraries (again, it's not an exhaustive list but is limited to nine cruise lines at the moment). And you can also click through to features such as aerial photos of the ship docks and close-up photos of the ships and their layouts.

I have to warn you -- if you like to cruise, this site is addictive!