The NY Times’ reports that the conflict of Interest Board approved Marty’s Norwegian Cruise Line because, hey, he’s the borough’s official ambassador and he did a lot of work on board. He couldn’t have picked a better time to be away. The CB6 board controversy was raging and while he may have been in hot water in Brooklyn he was soaking up the sun on board the cruise.

Markowitz has long advocated Brooklyn as a logical home for the overflow traffic from Manhattan’s cruise docks, and he lobbied the mayor’s office long and hard to build a cruise terminal in Red Hook. His office also kicked in $1.5 million toward the terminal’s more than $50 million cost. (In return for renovations the city made to its terminals, the Carnival and Norwegian Cruise Lines agreed to pay the city at least $200 million in port charges through 2017.)

Gene Russianoff, a lawyer for the New York Public Interest Research Group, said that when it came to accepting a free ride on a luxury liner, “inevitably there’s an appearance issue even if you dotted your i’s and crossed your t’s.” But he said Mr. Markowitz had done everything that could have been asked of him to steer clear of choppy ethical waters.

Mr. Markowitz said that other than the cost of the cruise itself, he paid for everything on the trip, including the flight to London for him and his wife, and her boat fare.

Still, that Mr. Markowitz went on the free trip at all was enough to draw reproach from some quarters.

“It’s not something I would have done, even if the Conflicts of Interest Board says it’s O.K.,” said Chris Owens, a former Congressional candidate who is considering a run for borough president in 2009. (Mr. Markowitz is barred by term limits from re-election.)