So I'm off to sea to acquire the remaining amount of seatime I need as a cadet. This saturday I board the Oasis of the Seas in Fort Lauderdale. She and the Allure of the seas are the worlds largest cruise ships. Last year when I was on the Independence I was overwhelmed at just how large that ship was, and the Oasis is 40% larger. I'll be based out of Florida going to the Bahamas, Haiti, St Thomas, St Maarten, Jamaica, and Cozumel. Here's a rather comprehensive video that shows just how incredible this ship is: Oasis of the Seas Tour Next blog is from the high seas!... read more

I know it’s been quite some time since I’ve updated this here blog, but I’ve been quite busy with work and entries all about work are pretty boring to write and read. Now that that’s out of the way, A few weeks ago I decided I was going to go ashore in the ports that I hadn’t yet because of scheduling. These mostly ended up being tender ports. Cannes was first up, It was pretty much just as I expected: Pretentious and French. There were lots of high end shops that neither I nor the 2nd officer I went ashore with could comprehend spending money at. The one thing that we did see lots of were movie theaters, made me feel like I was in Entourage (when they go to the film festival in Cannes). Conveniently ... read more

Lisbon: I had a couple hours to walk around so I started in the direction of a monument I had seen on arrival. Turns out it was a little bit of a further walk than I had envisioned… After getting slightly lost and buying a 6 pack for 2 euros I found myself back at the ship. But not before I had walked 7 kilometers… Every time we enter or leave Lisbon harbour we have to go under the 3rd longest suspension bridge in the world. We normally clear it by 6 or 7 meters. But this time due to the very big tide we had less than 4 meters of clearance. The pilot was very concerned and stared at the camera facing the stack until we cleared it. Vigo, Spain happens to be the biggest ... read more

Well there isn’t much to talk about as far as onboard life goes. I’m basically finished doing deck work which means no more early mornings spent swabbing the decks. This week I’m working with the deck repairman, he is in charge of finding creative repair solutions for deck equipment, completing hot work (welding, grinding, etc), and checking inspecting things like tanks and structures. On the 31st I’ll be starting work in the engine room, and I have no idea what I’ll be doing. A week later I’ll finally be working on the bridge. When we were in Civitavecchia 4 of us took the train to Rome. We accidentally boarded an Intercity Train instead of a Regional train which caused us to pay 8 euros more than our 9 euro ticket when our tickets got checked. Rome ... read more

Happy Canada Day folks! Now that it’s July I have been here for more than a month. I can hardly believe how fast the time goes by. It feels like just yesterday I was getting on a plane in dreary Vancouver. Probably has something to do with the fact that on top of school work, hitting the gym every second day, and having meetings with officers, I’m also working 10 hour days. One day I had to grease all the mooring equipment on the forward deck. I never though this would be a bad job until I realized the big painted number on each winch was the number of grease nipples each had. The big winches had 80 each, and there are 14 winches in total. Needless to say, I’m never complaining about trying to find ... read more