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Published: January 27th 2010
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On this current run that I do every week, there are a LOT of sea days. Of each 8 day cruise, 4 days are spent at sea. That’s a big reason why my blog has been rather quiet in terms of port stories compared to other contracts. Days at sea are just filled with work and lots of it. When I’m not working, I’m eating or sleeping or maybe getting to read or watch TV for an hour or two. Not much interesting to say. But in the last week or so, there have been a few happenings at sea out of the usual that I thought I’d share.
I’ve been working on ships for more than 3 years now, yet I’ve never seen whales or dolphins. You just don’t see them in the Caribbean, or at least very very rarely when it does happen. I’ve never seen it. But now I’m cruising the Pacific, on the West coast of Mexico and there are whales and dolphins here! In both of the last 2 cruises, on one of our sea days headed back North, sometime in the afternoon the Captain has come over the P.A. system to announce that we
Helping Haiti
Donations table were passing whales. My club is right at the top of the ship at the very front, having great access to the open deck. So as soon as the announcement was made, we rushed outside. It was awesome. They were so close! They were younger ones, playing in the waves.
Last week, after the whales, the teens and I were back in the club playing a game. Then one of the girl’s walkie-talkie went off and it was her dad saying that now there were dolphins. So we rushed back out. There were so many of them! At least a dozen dolphins jumping in and out of the waves at the base of the ship, right below where we were standing. This week there were just a few dolphins, at the same time we were passing the whales; they kept jumping right out of the water, soaring through the air like it was a show for us! It was awesome. I kept telling the teens how lucky they were to see it - it took me over three years!
Then the other night we had an event onboard that was different from anything I’ve been a part of
before. After the earthquake in Haiti, the Carnival Corporation donated 5 million dollars to organizations that are providing aid in Haiti. We were also encouraged to get support onboard. So the entertainment department put together a fundraiser. On the night when we normally have a big deck party under the stars, instead they held an outdoor concert. All of the different musicians on the ship played songs. Each of the production singers performed. The entertainment staff spoke between acts. Guests danced. The usual buffet was still served. But at the back of the crowd was a donation table set up where guests could make donations on their onboard credit cards to go towards Haiti relief. I always have the deck party on my schedule to go to with the teens, so this meant that our activity took us out to the concert. It was really great. It’s quiet right now, so I only usually have a few teens at a time. The handful of us sat out on the open deck under the stars watching the performances, then hit up the dance floor. I didn’t hear how much money was raised by the event, but there were plenty of people
going over to the donation table. It was a really great event and it felt good that something positive and beneficial was being done amongst all the extravagance that happens on a cruise ship.
Today’s day at sea brought some excitement of a different kind. As we headed back to our home port of San Diego, we were headed straight into a storm. But not just one storm, we were actually passing through the centre of where three different storm systems were going by. I’ve been through plenty of storms over the years and this one was not the worst, but it was bad. It seemed like everybody was sea sick. The ship felt like a ghost ship. My club being at the top at the front is not a good location when it’s rough, so it was exceptionally quiet which did not make the time pass very quickly! At one point, when there were no teens at all, myself and the director for the younger teen program just sat in the hallway outside my club and watched the massive waves crash around and the rain pour. I actually took photos because it was so crazy to watch, though
Helping Haiti
Todd rocking it the photos don’t really do justice at all to the size of the waves.
While storms and earthquakes are not really the sort of excitement I’d go looking for, those things along with the whales have switched things up a bit for life onboard. And I welcome interesting things to break up the monotony of seemingly endless sea days!
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