There's something a bit startling about looking out at what normally is a peaceful, quiet bay and finding a cruise ship the size of a skyscraper moored in the middle of it.

Friday Harbor gets cruise ships, but small ones. This one is a monster, 650 feet long, the kind of cruise ship you see looming on Seattle's waterfront in the summer. It's far too big for the harbor. They've moored it in a nearby bay and are letting people off the boat by using odd lighters-cum-lifeboats that look a bit like oversized greenhouses with outboard motors.

The ship is called The World. It's a residential ship. You don't buy a ticket, you buy or rent a condominium aboard. (They have everything from small studio apartments to six room penthouses available.)

It has no fixed route. The ship goes wherever the managers and residents decide they want to go. You live aboard full time, disembark whenever you think they've arrived somewhere interesting, get back aboard and go somewhere else. They almost never stay anywhere more than a day or two.

They're going to spend the rest of the summer wandering up the inside passage to Alaska. Then they're off to Russia, Japan, Australia and God alone knows where else.

I met a couple of the ship's residents in town today. Well fed, prosperous, decadent. Proud. And very, very tan.