I Spent 7 Days Learning AI on Queen Mary 2: An Honest Review of Nomad Cruise’s AI Edition

What is the Nomad Cruise AI edition?

Nomad Cruise bills itself as the world’s largest workation at sea: a programme of talks, workshops and social events for digital nomads, remote workers and entrepreneurs, run on board a regular cruise. This edition sailed Southampton to New York on Queen Mary 2, the last remaining ocean liner. It was seven days point to point with no stops, around 100 people, and a programme dedicated entirely to AI. Even the Nomad Cruise app was built with AI and updated on board during the trip.

How the programme works

There are two tracks. Explorer is for people just starting out with AI, and Operator is for people who’ve already built something substantial. Most days had short talks in the morning and longer sessions or build workshops in the afternoon, with Nomad Cruise’s social events around them.

I went Explorer, as I hadn’t built anything substantial yet, but found I was ahead of most of my group, so a fair amount of the content covered ground I already knew.

The most useful ideas

• How LLMs work: a clear explanation of how they choose the next word, every time.
• Text is the cheapest fuel for your AI. If you can do it in text, you should.
• Build a second brain: Patrick made the case for a searchable record of everything you know, built up over time.
• Questions and boundaries: Jacob, a non-coder, built a dashboard to run his real estate business. His advice was to give AI clear questions and clear boundaries, and stay in charge.
• Sell it first, then build it: the heart of Gonçalo’s “idea to launch in 24 hours” talk.
• Humans still matter: Dr Dan argued that while AI is taking jobs, people still bring taste and agency that computers can’t replace yet.
• AI video generation: Franzi’s talk was the one I’ll put to use first.
• Build your first AI app: we built a progressive web app. It was slow while Claude did its work, but it delivered, and Sebastian shared a QR code with everything we covered.

Not every session landed. Some went over the basics, and an AI agent workshop with around 50 people trying to follow along at once never really got going.

Life on board Queen Mary 2

I booked the cheapest cabin. It’s snug, with a very dated TV, but the bathroom and walk-in shower are a decent size. The air con can’t be turned off and gave me a headache for the first couple of days, until I turned the bed around. The ship is lovely to explore, from the library and the spare propeller blades on display to the games tables, jigsaws and live music. Cunard’s daily programme is huge, so there’s always more going on than you could ever do.

Drinks weren’t included on this trip, unlike some earlier Nomad Cruises. For exercise there’s a gym, and Deck 7 works well for running laps. I also set myself five intentions for the week, from keeping the booze low to exercising every day. You can see how those went in the video.

Arriving in New York

We were up at 4:30am for the arrival. The decks were closed at first, but the upper decks opened, and sailing past the New York skyline from the front of the ship was unbelievable. Right at the bow the wind nearly blows you off your feet, but a couple of metres back it’s completely calm.

Is it worth it?

You’ll have to watch the full video to find out. It includes my day-by-day scores and final verdict: https://tinyurl.com/25lowebx