Category: Ports

Inclement Weather

On By D. EndoIn PortsLeave a comment

We got redirected from our original route due to a tropical storm going past the Bahamas. I’m not sure how our passengers feel, but Mexico is much nicer than not being able to make port due to high seas. Not to mention having smoother sailing with better weather. This would have been the last time going to the Bahamas this season before doing the same ports until I leave. On the bright side, we did get to go to Progreso again. I am curious what we would have done if Mexico was not able to take us as other ships were probably redirected to avoid the storm as well. There are no convenient ports to travel to that are legal for us as the itinerary needs to have an international port if we are docking on the cruise. A lot of Caribbean ports are quite far from us or have limited capacity for cruise ships. It does make me wonder how busy the port of Progreso is an a normal basis as we were the only ship to dock there that day.

It’s not common to change itineraries as drastically as we did, but it isn’t unheard of. We’ve had to extend cruises due to a hurricane passing by the home port. Fortunately, the waters receded quickly, and we didn’t have to spend too much time waiting. Unfortunately, the next cruise was supposed to be short so we didn’t actually get to go anywhere. It became what is known as a cruise to nowhere. Due to US laws about ports and ship builds, our ships cannot only go to US ports. That’s why we couldn’t just go to Key West and back to Tampa. There needed to be at least one port not in the US. Otherwise, the ship will need to be made in America, with American steel, and crewed with American workers. This is why only specific companies will do exclusively American ports. Not all countries have a similar law.

I guess now I just have to get ready to have the same ports until the end of my contract.

Around the World Again

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I made a blunder. I forgot to check, and now I have two magnets for Napoli. Oh well, I guess it wasn’t that expensive. Anyway, I’m about to go home which means I’ll have now gone around the world twice. I’ve had a lot of fun seeing new ports, but now I’m tired. We’ve had a lot of new acts come onboard the ship. There have been many interesting shows to program from the aerial duos to the local groups that have to be kicked off before we set sail. I’m a little sick of some song selections as they are quite popular for acts to select and I can’t wait to get on a ship and have consistency of ports and acts. Really, I cannot express just how tired I am. The worst of it is, I really want to get out in the ports because I don’t know when I’ll be back. My next contract has me seeing new Alaskan ports but also very common Caribbean ports as well. I’m even swinging by San Francisco so I might be able to invite my family on for the day.

Even though I saw so much, I know there are places I was and was not able to see where I want to go. I went to quite a few Asian amusement parks that I want to see again. I had some awesome cuisine from their countries of origin, but that only scratches the surface on what I could have eaten. I went on an African Safari, but I wasn’t able to see giraffes or elephants. The ship sailed past Null Island in the middle of the night when I needed to sleep. Ok, there isn’t much to see at Null Island but still. Doing all of this just emphasizes how much there is to experience out there and how little I have actually seen. I’m no closer to accomplishing my goal of circumnavigating the globe, but I have seen a lot more of the world than I ever thought I would. I keep telling guests that if you had told me even six years ago when I was just starting in the company that this is what I would do, I would never have believed it. I’ve been to Cuba. I’ve been to Japan. I’ve been to South Africa. While I’m sad that this job keeps me away from home, I can’t wait to get on my next ship.

Oh, and I can now add Margherita pizza and carbonara in Italy to the list of things I’ve eaten.

My Challenge

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Six Continents down, one to go. The only downside is I’ll have to book my own trip to Antartica since no Royal Caribbean ship has any walking tours on the continent.

I have to say, I’ve really enjoyed my time in Africa. I went on an African safari and had some really good ostrich on a skewer. I saw three of the Big Five while on safari. I’m just missing the tallest and the largest, oddly enough. My constant challenge, as is always on this world cruise, is finding a magnet with the port name. I’ve gotten lucky several times and have only missed one magnet so far since I wasn’t able to go to a place with heavy tourism. One of the hardest things to deal with is the currency. I will say this for the Caribbean, Europe, and Australia, I really miss having a common currency. I now have a bunch of foreign paper currency that I don’t really know what to do with. At this point, it’s doubtful I’ll be going to those places again. I don’t know if I should just hold on to it or see what my bank can do with them. I’m just lucky that the dollar is strong enough to be accepted when my credit card isn’t. Well, I’ll be in Europe soon enough and then I’ll be back home a few weeks after that.

You would not believe how hard it is to find a simple magnet with the port magnet. The hardest I had to look for one on this trip was in Osaka when I went to Universal Studios there. It was amazing and I highly recommend going there if you get the chance. I went to pretty much every store looking for something with either Osaka or Universal Studios Japan written on it. None of their magnets could be identified specifically from that theme park. I was just about to give up when I saw a Hard Rock Cafe by the City Walk entrance. I bought my most expensive magnet there at about $20 for a single magnet that could represent my time there. Lucky me.

Anyway, now I’m looking forward to delicious Italian food.

The New Plan

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There’s never a dull moment at sea. We’re currently heading toward Dubai with stops in India. It’s been quite exhilarating to explore places I never thought I’ld go. If you told me ten years ago, this is where my life was heading, I wouldn’t believe you. Of course, I probably said the same thing when doing children’s theatre and touring up and down California.

Anyway, as we head to Dubai, there’s been a snag in the itinerary. The original plan was to head for the Suez Canal and spend some time in the Eastern Mediterranean. Due to instability in the area, it is not safe to use that route. Instead, we are going the long way around Africa. There are some guests who are upset to the point where they are getting off in Dubai and having their own adventures before rejoining the ship. Others are staying on the ship and just going with the flow. To be fair, those that are staying aboard will be able to say they sailed around the world taking no short cuts through canals so that’s something. I will say, I’m a little disappointed about not being able to go see the pyramids or visit Athens again. There was a painting of the acropolis in Athens that I really wanted to buy but decided not to last time I went through the area. I regret that decision. Someday, I’ll go back to Athens and will be able to get one but not this cruise. We eventually will get back to our original itinerary, but this does cut down on the Mediterranean ports to make up for the time traveled around Africa.

I’m excited to go to Madagascar and Cape Town among other places. Perhaps I’ll try for a wild safari while we’re there. I’m not sure what to expect, though I am happy I don’t have to worry about a yellow fever vaccine since I already got one. A lot of guests were not expecting to need it until the itinerary made it mandatory when visiting certain ports. I saw long lines in medical, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it so full.

I can’t wait to say I’ve walked on six continents.

Work Comes First

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Well, I was thoroughly disappointed on this second trip to Australia. I was told when I was thinking about joining cruise ships that one of the benefits was the amount of travel you get to do. There should a an asterisk next to the travel because of the potential problems with that statement. For example, one of the biggest ships in the fleet is doing three and four day cruises to the Bahamas. This means they are seeing the exact same ports over and over again. The route is leave from the east coast of Florida, go to Nassau, go to Coco Cay, and back to Florida. I should know. I’ve did this route as part of my first contract with Royal Caribbean. It does come with some benefits to new hires. You can easily get things you may want or need as your home port is never too far away. I didn’t have to worry about a language barrier anywhere I went as English is the most common language in the Bahamas. It did get boring. Thank goodness I got a change in itinerary.

Anyway, back to Australia, the last time I came through the area, I wasn’t able to see the Great Barrier Reef due to weather. I was all set to go on a crew tour and they had to cancel because the weather was too rough to even get ashore. I was super excited because I would have minimal duties that day as we were staying quite late so it wasn’t worth it to have an evening performance in the theater, so we made it a movie night instead. Seeing as I didn’t have to rush back for a rehearsal, I booked a ticket to go see the reef. The weather was going to be hot but nice for traveling. Everything was all set. Then came time to get off the ship, and here is another instance of that asterisk coming into play. If I was able to get off the ship by noon, I probably would have made my tour, but there is one thing that needed to happen before I could do that. I needed the captain to permit shore leave to the crew. In order to get that to happen, all guests who wanted to leave the ship right away needed to be off loaded first. Due to some difficulty in this process, I could only wait as time ticked away. By the time shore leave was granted, it was almost 1 PM. There was no way for me to make it to the boat to take me to the reef. I ended up just wandering in the town, which I often do. It wasn’t all bad, but it could have been better if I could have gotten off the ship by the time I wanted. Maybe next time.

I have decided that I will only buy tickets for things when I know I can do them. I may miss out on some things that sell out early, but at least I won’t waste as much money regarding missing a sight seeing trip.

On the bright side, I was able to go to Disneyland Hong Kong and see pandas, so this cruise was not a complete loss.

Hurricane Delay

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We got a surprise sea day yesterday. With Hurricane Idalia hitting Florida, we were lucky enough that our home port of Tampa wasn’t hit directly. Idalia was a category 3 hurricane when it made landfall, classifying it as a major hurricane with winds up to 129 mph. While I normally don’t have to deal with tropical storms and hurricanes, I was still quite surprised at how far the effects of a hurricane can go. Idalia pushed a lot of water in front of itself, striking all of Florida’s shores that face the Gulf of Mexico. Tampa is about 150 miles from where the storm hit and it still saw a storm surge of up to 7 feet in some places. This was not helped when the tide came in which added even more to the huge amount of water there. For safety reasons, we cannot go into
Tampa until the channel checked for safety and water levels recede. We’ll still try to do a modified cruise for our customers, but they will no longer have a leisurely day in Cozumel as we’ll be getting in much later than intended, having lost a day of sea travel. There were tentative plans to cancel this coming cruise, but our captain has deemed it possible to make it and still have a satisfactory cruise. Doing the math, we will probably arrive early to mid afternoon if we rush there at top speed. I’m guessing this will turn into a shopping trip for most guests now as some shore excursions will probably not be possible.

I was not surprised by the plans to cancel the next cruise due to the way US maritime laws work with cruise ships. I actually learned about this in my time working for American Cruise Lines. If you are a passenger vessel and you only do US ports, your ship must be American. This means only American made parts and American steel while only hiring American workers. Our ships don’t qualify for this so we must have at least one foreign port on any of our cruises with Royal Caribbean. If you’ve ever been with a major cruise, this is why you can’t have just an Alaskan cruise with only American ports. You will always stop in Vancouver or have that be your home port. This got me wondering if we would even have the cruise having lost a day of travel. There are no close foreign ports we could go to while going out of Tampa. We’re on the wrong side of Florida for a quick trip to the Bahamas. The Yucatan peninsula is also pretty far. Key West doesn’t count because that’s still Florida. Even if we had the proper paperwork, we’re too big to get into Havana. Everything else is even farther away.

While there is a bit of a scramble right now, my plans to go home don’t seem to be affected at the moment. I still have about a week before I fly home, so (fingers crossed) everything should be fine by then.

Closed for Maintenance

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I didn’t forget. I’ve just been quite busy.

We just did something kind of rare for cruise ships. We just did a wet dock. This means we got all the passengers off the ship and then tied ourselves to the pier so we could do a little maintenance all over the ship. With no passengers, we could focus on fixing things and improving the guest experience. Normally we would try to avoid disrupting the guest experience which means some things get neglected because they are in high traffic areas. Not everyone has work to do during the time we’re tied up. Housekeepers have much less to do as do the cruise staff. As a result, some people get this time as basically a vacation. These people could be put on fire watch. Basically, they get to sit by the people welding with a fire extinguisher and put out anything that catches on fire. What’s worse, you can’t be distracted while doing this. Your attention needs to be 100% on making sure the area doesn’t start to burn.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) for me, the theater was busy with several agendas. We had vendors and contractors coming onboard to make sure our equipment was running properly. We also had a new cast come in, so part of our time was spent in rehearsal with them. I am a little disappointed I couldn’t go to Busch Gardens like some of the more free crew members, but it was good to fix up the theater. In addition to fixing up the ship, we were also installing a new cast. This means we had to do extra rehearsals to make sure the shows with new cast were just as good as the previous ones. That also made us work longer hours as we worked through everything.

In case you’re wondering, there are also dry docks. These mean we pull the ship out of the water to do other work on the hull of the ship. This is much less common than wet docks as it is not always necessary to inspect the hull every single time you do maintenance. My first ship spent a month and a half in dry dock while I was on it. That was an interesting experience.

All The Things I Missed

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A large inconvenience that happens when working on a ship is not being able to do things in the ports. Sometimes it’s because you lack the proper paperwork to leave the ship and others it’s because you are working and so can’t really get off the ship to do what you want. I’m already creating a list of things that I would love to do in the ports I visit. A good portion of the list is things that I never did but was able to hear about usually due to the shore excursions advertisements on the tv.

On my first ship, I found out that you can go on a submarine voyage in Cozumel. I got really excited for the possibility. Unfortunately, when I went to try to book a ticket at their office, the waters were too choppy to set sail, and I was sent home before we went there again. So now I actually have a list of where I’ve been and what I want to do there if I ever go back there. Some of the things on the list are things I heard about but never got around to checking out. Others are things I’ve done before, but I would really like to do them again. For example, I would love to see the Great Barrier Reef if I’m ever back in Australia or take a city tour of Dubai as I wasn’t able to do those things while on the Explorer. On the other hand, I can’t wait to go back and enjoy Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and Tivoli Gardens. I’m not sure when I’ll be back to those places, but I’ll know better what I want to do when I am.

If anyone is wondering, I am now part of the less than 1% of people who have been on a submarine and gone underwater. I did it in Aruba. It was a lot of fun.

Local Food

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I’m back home now and am slowly adjusting to life on land. One of the things I started doing on the ship was make a list of all the foods I wanted to eat once I got back home. I hope I can get through the list before I get back on the waters (whenever that is).

I am in the habit of trying foods from the areas I go to. I have had key lime pie in Key West, a Cuban sandwich in Havanna, and stroganoff in St. Petersburg. I have been to Halifax and had donair and poutine. One of the best New England clam chowders was from a restaurant in Portland, ME along with a lobster roll. I have tried kangaroo, crocodile, buffalo, emu, rabbit, and moose. Sometimes I really enjoy the new foods and others, not so much. Every now and then, I discover later on that what I thought was a local food wasn’t really orginally a local food. The Cuban sandwich that I mentioned earlier is a good example of this. The Cuban part of the name more likely applies to the customer than the country of origin. It appeared in local communities in Miami and Tampa, Florida around the mid 1800’s where small communities of Cuban cigar factory workers lived. Traffic between Florida and Cuba was pretty common from then up until 1959 when a revolution took place. I’m sure the sandwich I had was there more for the appeal of having a “local” food while vacationing in Havana. Still, it was pretty tasty.

You never know what you will find when you go looking for food. Growing up, one of my favorite items to get from the hot lunch line was called a taco pocket. If you’ve never had one, its essentially a meat and gravy in a pot pie crust pastry pocket. I think that’s the best way to describe it. It was slightly spicy and full of flavor. When I left elementary school, I never thought I would be able to try that again. In Bridgetown, Barbados, there is a little stand just outside the terminal building. I had passed it a couple of times without giving it a second thought. One time, a couple of my coworkers asked if I wanted to join them for Jamaican beef panties. I went with them and was pleasantly surprised. I took a bite and my childhood memories came flowing back to me. It was the same taste or at least close enough to evoke the memories. I told my coworkers who shrugged it off, but I was ecstatic at being able to relive my childhood for a brief moment.

Dive! Dive!

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I finally went and did it. I ticked something off of my bucket list. I took a ride in a submarine in Aruba. An actual submarine that took us to a maximum depth of 135 feet below sea level. It was amazing. In addition to the natural reef, the company who owns the submarines has actually sunk three vessels into the water for our viewing pleasure. Two of the crafts were wooden and the third was metal. It was interesting to see how the ships were actually becoming the bases for new coral reefs. Wood vessels are actually very good materials for new coral reef formations. Coral can latch on to the ship in a matter of a few years. When a metal ship goes down, not only does it hold its shape for much longer, the coral also takes longer to attach itself to the surfaces. Due to the depth, it wasn’t very colorful due to the natural light being filtered at such depths. David’s red shirt ended up looking grey as we traveled deeper.

In addition to the local marine life, we also got to see a lion fish which is actually an invasive species here in the Atlantic. They originally come from the Eastern Asian waters, but due to hurricanes and flooding in residential areas, some where released into the wild. Lion fish populations are normally controlled by predators eating them when they are small, thus they use the shotgun approach for their species survival like sea turtles. This means they lay many eggs with the knowledge that many will be eaten before they reach full maturity. Unfortunately, there are no species that naturally know to eat the baby lion fish in the Atlantic. Add that to the fact that lion fish eat pretty much anything they find and you can see how much trouble they are to the ecosystem. The only known predator in the area to eat lion fish are humans. In case anyone gets nervous about that, lion fish are venomous, not poisonous. They inject venom through the spines on their fins rather than poisoning something upon being swallowed. Once the spines are removed, the rest of the fish is perfectly fine to eat. Even better, the fish tastes good and is healthier than most common options on the menu like snapper, grouper, or mahi-mahi.

David was pretty exited to be a part of the 1% of the human population to ever dive in a real submarine, but I’m pretty sure I’m the first drop bear to go in a submarine.