All the Roadrunning

I am exhausted. Not because of having a lot of work to do, but due to the inability to sleep. The first three nights involved the constant blasting of the fog horns from the navigational bridge every two minutes, all night, as is required in such weather conditions. My cabin happens to be on Deck 4 and towards the front of the ship, and so this location not so far away from the bridge, has put the fog horn practically right outside of my small porthole.
And so, I have been forced to watch “The Life of Brian”, “Ratatouille” and “Ocean’s Thirteen” over and over and over again, not to mention that “Ratatouille” was in French and “Ocean’s Thirteen” was in German.

We dropped off 2000 passengers today in Southampton and picked up another 2000, a group of guests that will only be with us for a short two-day voyage. Tomorrow we are in Cherbourg, France and the next day we are already back in Southampton. This crowd is a ‘different’ kind of crowd; the kind that asks for additional bathrobes to steal before they even unpacked their luggage. Not one person was sitting in the lobby listening to our four piece orchestra at any point during the entire afternoon. Nobody came to us to book any tours for tomorrow in France, out of 2000 guests we have 85 people heading to places such as the Normandy Landing Beaches, Bayeux Tapestry and Gardens of Cherbourg.

We also have a British Coast Guard boat drill tomorrow at 10am, an event that puts extreme fear into every crew member as the ship’s permission to sail depends on our performance. Significant incorrect answers to the Coast Guard’s questioning could theoretically put them in a position where they would stop the ship for sailing, finding the crew too incompetent. This never happens of course, or at least not on the major cruise lines, but the fear is always there.

But I’m prepared, after all I just finished my third ‘new crew’ training session yesterday, where we had to memorize – sea anchor, food, water, fishing gear, hand pump, sponges, thermal protective suit, hand flares, smoke flares, rocket flares, mirror, knife & rope – everything found in a life boat. But then we are reminded that the life boats are for the guests and that the crew is assigned only to the life rafts. We then practiced using fire extinguishers on the back deck, shooting water, CO2, dry powder and foam onto cardboard flames. In only thirty minutes I became, once again, a certified seaman and a firefighter.

And so tomorrow, as soon as the eight blasts on the ship’s horn are heard, I shall don my lifejacket and yellow baseball cap, run up to “Muster Control” and man the control center for the drill. The phones ring, people are checking in, people are lost, people are missing lifejackets or children, heart attacks are happening, fires are starting, mass casualties are suffered. It is all a drill of course, but everything is thrown in our direction and we must deal with it all properly or fail.

On a side note, for the past six days I have had to wear the same uniform upon discovering that little has changed in the world of crew laundry services. I sent three sets of uniforms to be dry cleaned on my first day on board. Two came back dirtier than when I had sent them, with stains of varying colors suddenly plastered all over the sleeves, pockets and collar. The last set had magically lost four of its six buttons, a situation that would take 3-4 days to rectify for sure. And most likely in the process of re-sewing the buttons back on, some more stains will present themselves and I will have to repeat the process again. Usually, during any given contract, I have one complete uniform that is circulating constantly between the laundry men, iron man and sewing woman.

I am also starving all the time, something that happens, not only to me, but to many of us working on ships. My meals are not small – I usually eat an appetizer, salad, two main courses and a desert with names such as Cassis Champagne Mousse with Fresh Wildberry Sauce. But there is something in the food, something I cannot say for certain, but which mysteriously acts very similarly to laxatives. Some crew member on some ship for some cruise line once started the rumor that food on board ships was laced with laxatives to aid in not only the digestive processes, but to help ensure that the plumbing pipes are not worked too hard. Anyway, whatever is the source, I AM STARVING, and it appears that I will soon have to restart my old nightly routine of sneaking into the officer’s mess late at night to retrieve enough mini-boxes of cereal to fill a bucket.

Last night I finally went to the ‘Wardy’ aka ‘Wardroom’ aka ‘Officer’s Bar’. My entire team went and we had a couple of drinks in the dark, smoky room. Krystyna, the Ukrainian bartender, served us whiskey/gingers and pineapple/rums as the British officer’s sang drunikedly in the back corner, the Canadian youth staff were climbing all over the tables and chairs as if they were children themselves, the Sanitation officer was there as were the nurses and the Captain’s Secretary. Actually, the Captain himself came down for a visit, stopping along the way to shake hands, smile and wave to us simple folk as if he were the Dalai Lama. Some crew look like they want to drop to their knees and prostrate before this master of the vessel while others just bow while trying their hardest not to make any eye contact.

I stayed in the bar until 1am and then I returned to my cabin for a grand 4 hours of sleep. Today began at 5:45am and finished at 8:30pm as I worked in my office, supervised the disembarkation while standing in the luggage hall of the Southampton terminal building for four hours, had meetings with our UK bosses, paged the Chief Systems Officers a few dozen times as our tour booking system continued to crash repeatedly throughout the day and was forced to move into another temporary cabin (as the technical department needed their cabin back) until the 16th. I ate spinach quiche for lunch and pan-seared haddock for dinner.

Tomorrow we arrive in Cherbourg at 7am and we have to move the clocks forward another hour (the 5th time in 6 days) tonight. From the comfort of my large, mini-suite passenger cabin (which I can enjoy for the next two days!), I shall lie down and hopefully enjoy a full night’s sleep for the first time since being on board.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Return to Ship Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.