First sea days

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Blogs are going to be easiest to post on port days, as the website I use doesnt give me the option to GPS tag where I am,
it asks me for a city location everytime.
So how did the first few days at sea go?
I awoke extremley early in southampton with my one night room mate Jerod and got our transfer to the ship. I was full of
nerves and excitement as I still had no idea what to expect. After a 2 hour coach ride we arrived in southampton and the first
thing I saw of the ship was the funnel from about half a mile away over some buildings. As I had been saying to everyone
that is the moment it 100% sunk in what I was doing. Loggin and secruity checks followed, which included my Gerber being
confiscated untill I could get my manager to sign for it.
I met my cabin mate Pato at about 9am, said goodbye to Lee who was vacating my bunk that day and who is off to the Queen Mary 2.
I thought I would have an easy first day with no work, just getting orientated but I got handed a schedule which said
I would be on the follow spots for that nights welcome on board show in the Royal Court Theatre.
Nothing prepaired me for the sight of the theatre, it really is like being in the west end, with the exception that everything
is sandbagged down to the floor and,obviously, we have to be aware of the movement of the ship aswell. The stage crew comprises
of around 7 guys and one girl, with a lighting engineer, sound engineer and several other positions. Between us all we take care of
every microphone/light/venue on board.
The ship is literally covered in venues, you cant walk through a public area for more than a minute without seeing a grand
piano, harp, string quartet or some other form of music.
Seeing as I was not at work untill that evening, it give me time to look around the ship. I was given a tour, then I asked
to be left on my own somewhere so I could get my self lost on purpose and try to find my way back. This seemed to work,
as being stage crew I am allowed to walk around most of the public areas. Its abit like walking round a movie set, with
plush carpets, automatic doors and stunning artworks on every wall.
The shows on the first night went well, it took me afew moments to get the hang of the spot, which included me turning it off
by accident and having to wait 10 minutes for it to cool down so we could turn it back on.
The first night trying to sleep was.......interesting. My cabin is right on the hull, but because we are below the waterline
we dont get the sound of waves.The main thing to contend with while sleeping is the listing of the ship. This lead to, at
about 2am, me having a nightmare that the ship was toppling over and I woke up as I was vaulting out of my bunk (Im on the top)
and feeling a right idiot as I hit the floor and had to climb back into bed.

At the start of the second day I was really feeling the motion of the ship in the pit of my stomach, but under advise from everyone
just tried to ignore it, and it is now slowly becoming part of life.
Im being scheduled for lots of different things, setting up bands, making sets, bingo,dancing, allsorts really. The working
pattern is abit strange as most jobs only take between 5-15 minutes to set up, then its back to the cabin/mess hall/bar or something
untill its time for the next job, which can sometimes be upto 5 hours away.
Im writing this at the start of third day, I belive we are coming around the south of Portugal at the moment, about to
head into the straight of Gibralter. Im going to try to post this when we reach Barcelona, as most of the crew tend to
leave the ship and hunt down free wifi in a city, which means Ill be able to stream saturdays Dr Who into iPlayer and watch it back on board
as our bandwidth isnt brilliant, due to it being a satellite connection.

Hope everyones good back home, please feel free to get in touch with me on facebook and Ill speak to you all soon 😊

PS, Blog for Barcelona will be posted soon as I havnt written it yet.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Hope you will add photos to your blogs
Sounds like an adventure. Loved the story about you vaulting out of your bunk.