Settling in

14 December 2007

This is a bit of a frustrating post to have to write. I sit here in my cabin knowing that one of my favourite ports is just on the other side of the wall and I’m not allowed off the ship because I have Port Manning. The thing that makes it doubly frustrating is that I know that we don’t come back here again and this is my only opportunity to revisit the Giggling Gecko, my favourite bar, to have a cold beer and a blackened chicken wrap. With all the confusion and unfamiliarity of getting on a new ship it would have nice to have had a safe and familiar port to visit, going for my usual walk from Crown Bay into downtown Charlotte Amalie and seeing sights that would almost have felt a little like home after having visited so often on the last contract. I guess the only thing that can be said for being stuck on board is that it’s preparation for the world cruise where opportunities to visit new ports are going to be truly one offs and the onus of Port Manning even more frustrating .

Apart from this frustration things are started to settle a little bit, while in other ways are still a bit confusing. The cage is still maddening in that I have to figure out a new way of balancing and changes in procedure and paperwork from the last contract that add little twists to what I’m used to. It doesn’t really help that with only me and the head cashier to man the cage we don’t actually work together much. That means that I don’t have anyone to talk to when it’s quiet and I also don’t have anyone to ask questions of when I get lost or strike something unknown. I’ve really come to appreciate the support that I got from the people I worked with last time and am really missing Maria’s help and friendship.

I have the location of the cage figured out and the location of my cabin in the greater scheme. Being a much smaller ship things like the crew office are much closer and easier to find. Hopefully I won’t need the crew office too often and certainly hope I won’t need to see the doctor at all (touch wood) although I have had to go there twice already as part of the induction. Firstly I had to drop off my medical records and was given a flu injection along with a TB test. Then I had to go back two days later to see if I had TB, which fortunately I didn’t.

Fortunately I also have the location of the food figured out and was up there with my cabin mate just a little while ago having breakfast after our Immigration inspection. The immigration inspection is something that happened last time as well and is basically the US government giving us a small slip of paper that becomes our entry visa into US ports. We have to have it on us every time we get off the ship in a US port like Fort Lauderdale since we don’t have our actual passport with us. A vital little piece of paper and not something that you want to lose. All the crew that got on the ship this week had to queue up and have the form stamped and handed back to us. All the passengers had to attend a similar thing, US citizens in one room and non-US in another, since St Thomas is a US port. Funnily it’s only the US that does this out of the ports that I’ve visited so far but it will be interesting to see what happens when we get out into the rest of the world. Luckily I have avoided one piece of paperwork by having a New Zealand passport. The rest of the crew have to apply for an Australian Maritime Crew Visa because we’ll be visiting Australia. Because of my nationality, and maybe because I live there, I don’t have to. I should also have a couple of less hassles with foreign exchange when I get there as well because I just have to find an ATM to have access to Australian currency. In fact I hope to be able to deposit any excess wages (he said laughing at the word excess) while I’m in Australia.

I have to say that the food on board is pretty good. The breakfast that we have access to is a buffet but most of it is prepared and plated for you as you move along. There is the usual array of cereals and even hot porridge along with an omelette bar and all the usual hot food suspects. I had eaten at the midnight buffet last night after I finished (which strangely finishes at midnight rather than starting at midnight) and was still a little full after the two pepper steaks, quiche and mashed potatoes so I just had fruit, toast and pancakes for breakfast. I may have to watch how much I eat on this ship and maybe not eat at every break.

Right now I’m killing time while I wait for 2pm to roll around. Another of the new starters and I have to complete an online environmental training course so we can be certified. That is the last of the induction training courses I have to do and then I can hand in all the completed paperwork to the crew office and finally have all the “first week” hassles behind me. Every time you come on board you have to attend the usual array of safety and familiarity courses and be signed off as having done and understood them. It means a lot of running around but I got most of it done yesterday and, fortunately not having any safety duties assigned to me, I had less to learn than last time. We do have a full evacuation drill next week so I’ll get to run through what to do if we do have abandon ship but for me it’s mostly a matter of getting my lifejacket and getting to my life raft.

It’s only been 4 days but the cabin is becoming familiar and starting to feel like a safe place already. It really is home for 6 months and it’s important that it becomes a safe place and somewhere you can retreat to. Francis my roommate seems like a nice guy, he’s tidy, quiet and has been on the ships for a while so I have someone I can learn from. The size of it isn’t such a shock anymore and now that I have the basics of work and food almost figured out, along with the fact that I can have my laundry done by my cabin steward for what I consider a very reasonable rate given how much I hate doing it, it means that the mainstays of life on board are in place. We are in Guadeloupe tomorrow and if I can get off the ship for the first time, get some sun and a bit of a look around with my camera, then I will begin to relax even more.

So that’s where it stands at the moment. The ship is confusing still, work is very confusing still, I haven’t been allowed off the ship yet and I’m living in a cabin the size of a shoe box for a very small pair of shoes. Apart from that it’s going well and I’ll probably be able to report improvements at a steadily increasing rate for a while.

Greg