About Me

Follow my travels and get insight from behind the scenes as I work my 6 month contract as a Guest Service representative onboard a cruise ship.

Tuesday 10 January 2012

Holy Ship! Days 88-92: Montego Bay, Sea, Florida, Bahamas, Halfmoon Cay


January 7, 2011 at 19:48

Wow, it's been a very interesting few days so let's get right into in. In this post I need to cover three loose ends from my last post, my first night shift, and a VERY interesting incident in the Bahamas.

Ok, so first that odd make a phrase out of these letters thing I found out wasn't requested for me specifically so that makes it less bizarre. Still weird but at least it wasn't something they wanted me specifically to do for some reason.

Second, I left a little bit of a cliff hanger and the end of the last post regarding news I found out that would change the remanded of my contract.  That news is that my Guest Relations Manager, Hotel Manager, and Cruise Director are all disembarking on the 28th and new people are coming on. That means all the rules and regulations we've gotten used to and the people we're used to working with are about to be thrown into the blender. None of us really know what to expect but loosing our GRM sucks.  When she told us she was on the verge of tears because this wasn't something she wanted but something head office decided needed to be done so she could have her time off before they want to put her on a different ship in the near future. It blows.

Third, I went on my first excursion in Montego Bay!  We went to Dunn's River falls after a two hour bus ride across Jamaica passing through the home towns of Bob Marley and Housain (sp?) Bolt along the way.  The falls were incredible. Coming in at the bottom of the falls the water was pretty well freezing and it was overcast on top of that so it wasn't the warmest experience but the rush of climbing up the falls kept us going.  I did the climb with one of the officers who works in our office and his girlfriend which turned out to be a great time especially seeing as before I bumped into them I was going to be doing it by myself.  Most amazing I think was the fact of just not slippery the rocks were. I did it in my sneakers and never once felt like I was loosing grip.  We got to the top, met up with our group then headed to the beach.  The beach we went to was a private beach we had to drive through the woods to get to where we had access to drinks and food for an hour before we had to head back to the ship.  All in all a great day. :)

OK, no onto Holy Ship!.  Holy Ship! was a full charter that brought on 30ish of some of the best dub step DJs for a 3 day music festival on the water.  The passengers paid roughly $2,500 for the 3 days each and were pretty well drunk or high for all of it.  

Working nights for a cruise like this was never dull and in fact the only down time we were got was between 4-6am but then only for 20-30mins at a time.  Highlights included a full grown man in the lobby wearing only batman underwear, two topless girls making out under the waterfall, and a large man that fell down the stairs. I've also never had to replace so many keys in such a short period of time.  My favourite was when someone would come to see us for something and then come back later having no memory of having been to see us earlier. Kids and their drugs.

The music wasn't exactly my scene but I did get to see Fatboy Slim play a set up on the pool deck which was more than enough to keep me happy.  Brought back lots of great memories from high school. Right about now, the fuck soul brother…

OK, so here's the real excitement not only of the cruise but of the contract.  Early Saturday morning at around 7am there was a loud thud and the whole ship shook.  After you've been onboard for a while you start to recognize certain sounds and movements as being normal. This was not.  We didn't' really think anything of it and just looked at it as if it's important we'll find out soon enough.  Well it wasn't  long before we found out.

Mandy came out and while I was halfway through recoding a guest's keys she said "we hit something and we're stuck". Pardon me, what?! She said it again except this time clarifying it to that it was the bottom we had hit and we were firmly lodged into the sea floor.  Now I'm sure you can understand that hearing news like that is pretty well the last thing I expected to hear when I went to work but still I couldn't help but enjoy the excitement.  While eating breakfast the ship was trying so hard to dislodge itself that everything was shaking. Even the help of 3 tug boats couldn't get us free.  It wasn't long before they gave up trying and decided to tender the guests ashore and wait for high tide to give it another shot.

6:30 rolled around and next thing we knew there were 5 tug's attached to our back while the ship gave all she had while they tried to pull us free.  For a while nothing moved. The tugs tugged and the ship shook but we didn't budge. Eventually the tugs were able to wiggle us side to side and we started to move loose. After much wiggling we finally got free and were able to keep sailing.  Everyone has been pretty tight lipped over exactly what kind of damage has been done but it can't be that bad because we're still sailing.  Still I can't believe that there wasn't some time of significant damage done.. I mean we bottomed out, it's bad when that happens in a little boat, I can only imagine what it does to a large ship like this one.

If you want to see a bit more of what actually happened check out these two YouTube videos a local already put up online… Pretty crazy.


1 comment:

  1. Umm, would you care to comment on the photo of the guy in his underwear? Or is it his swim suit?

    ReplyDelete