May 19, 2007: amanaP :lanac a ,nalp a ,nam A

Buenas dias de Panama, the palindrome nation. Arrived last week to begin our our new itinerary in the San Blas Islands (southern Caribbean coast of Panama). Windjammer has exclusive rights to dive here - first time any operator runs any dives down here (legally, anyway), so lots of exploration coming up. The diving hasn't been that impressive yet but our first cruise in the islands was cut short so hopefully next week I'll find some cool spots at some of the islands we haven't visited yet, which are further offshore (the dives I did this week were surprisingly murky, and not a whole lot of fish, though the corals were in pretty good shape).

The islands themselves are pretty quiet. A lot are inhabited but the lifestyle is pretty simple: we're talking thatch-roof cane huts, and hammocks, with the economy based on coconut trade and skin diving for lobsters. Life's rough.

I'll be spending at least every second weekend in a hotel in Panama City, since we (either me or the purser) have to check our passengers in here Saturday nights, send them off on canal tours on Sunday, then accompany them back to the ship in Colon. Not really a weekend off but at least I get a hot shower (or even, gasp, a bath!) and a night in a bed that doesn't rock. And free internet, so I should be able to update my blog a little more often.

[Don't get too jealous, this lifestyle's not as great as it sounds to pretty much everyone else. Despite all the passengers telling me that I don't actually work, that I have a dream job, that I don't need a holiday cause I'm living in one, the reality is, my living space consists of a cabin the size of a standard office cubicle, which I share with another woman; we only occasionally have water in the bathroom that passes for tepid; I work from 7:30 till whenever I go to bed at night, which is rarely as early as I'd like (there's trivia night to host and appearances to put in at the costume party and karaoke night...); all day long I field all manner of stupid questions from passengers about where to sign up for things, how to cancel sign-ups, how to charge tips to their accounts after account closing time, when the dive that was cancelled cause no one signed up is leaving, where can they get fresh towels, etc. (and in almost every single case the answers were explained in detail at the daily passenger meeting they've just attended); I have to smile and be courteous to busy-bodies who think they know more about how the ship is run than I do because, after all, I've only been here a few months and they've already done 5/12/18/37/pick-a-number cruises; I have to deal with a head office who never sends us what we need when we need it (the most recent blunder made the ship start our repositioning cruise two days late, so we had to organize flight changes for all our passengers, keep the ones we had happy, arrange for those who wanted to abort the cruise altogether to go home, and then once we finally arrived we had to deal with another lot of unhappy passengers who'd been waiting two days for their ship to arrive); I get virutally no time off; there's no place on a ship to get any exercise; I eat the same food week-in, week-out; have to be discreet about my relationship with my boyfriend; and since both of us share cabins with other crew... well, you get the idea. It's a hell of a lot to give up for the sake of a little cash.]

Anyway, at least I'm getting to work on my Spanish...

May 15, 2007: Water water everywhere...

So after the cricket charter, we began repositioning down to Panama for our new itinerary. First a semi-normal one-week cruise from St. Lucia down to Grenada, followed by a one at sea from Grenada down to Colon. Now, we could have had a one-week dead-head with no passengers, but the company decided to try to make a little money out of the trip and promoted it as a "blue water" cruise: no stops till Panama. In the end only 23 passengers (out of a possible 72) booked, which in a way was almost worse than having no passengers at all: whether you've got only one passenger or 72, you still have to get up, serve them five meals a day, change their sheets and towels, and keep them entertained, all while the ship is pitching and rolling on open seas. The difference is in the pay-off you get in tips at the end of the week. I think for the sake of 23 passengers worth of tips, most of the crew would have been happy to forget about it and have a week off.

Anyway, so it goes. Now here's the curve ball: since we were only going to have 23 passengers, and since there clearly wouldn't be any diving, Rusty, the purser/activities mate, arranged to get the week off the ship so she could go up to the U.S. to renew her greencard (putting in a couple days at head office to make it legit) with me taking over as purser and activities mate for the week. Only 23
passengers—easy, right? Sure. Until our bearing shaft that we've been waiting for didn't show up... again. Except this time, with seven days of open water ahead of us (not to mention the lack of ship-repair facilities in the San Blas), there was no question about sailing without it. So we waited. And waited. The part finally came at the end of the second day, by which time we'd already sent home five passengers who couldn't get extra time off work and decided to abort the cruise. So then we were down to 18 passengers, all slightly less good-humoured than when they arrived after having sat in port for two days.

The cruise itself actually wasn't so bad; the water wasn't nearly as rough as I'd expected, though I still can't sleep on a rolling ship (our captain can't either, though, and he's been doing this for over 25 years). And our passengers were pretty laid-back; I suppose you don't sign-up for a blue-water cruise and expect tonnes of excitement. It got crazy again towards the end as our ETA in Colon changed on a daily basis and I had the pleasure of coordinating flight changes a few times over for all the passengers. So much for the office making money on this cruise; they blew it all on flight change fees and free tours to smooth things over with the passengers. And then when we arrived we had to turn the ship around in just a few hour for a ship-full of unhappy passengers waiting since two days to board a ship that wasn't there and looking forward to half the amount of time in the San Blas they'd paid for. So much for shore leave. Good times.

April 24, 2007: Batter batter batter batter swing!

Er, sort of. So here I am in the West Indies and it's the International Cricket World Cup. Our ship has been chartered for a month and a half to take South African cricket fans island hopping to the various matches. I was a little worried that these guys were going to be all cricket, all the time. I mean, who but a serious cricket fan would spend thousands of dollars - and with the South African rand being what it is, most of these guys have been saving up for this trip for the last four years — and nearly four days of roundtrip airport/flight time to get to islands thousands of miles away just to watch a cricket match? I mean, cricket, honestly. If it was soccer or rugby or even baseball, I could understand, but cricket? These matches can last days, and for most of the time there's nothing happening. You've got to be a hardcore fan to spend all that money to come and watch cricket.

Boy was I wrong. These guys are definitely cricket fans, but they're even bigger boozers. We're talking record bar sales here — they'd even give my Irish Uncle Ken a run for his money. And there's no lame-ass pretentions about being civilized waiting until noon for their first drop: these guys drink from the moment they wake up to the moment they stumble back to their beds at night. And boy can they stumble.

Anyway, the point is, these guys are down here for three things: the Caribbean itself, the experience of sailing on a tall ship, and catching some world-class cricket. For many of them, the cricket definitely comes last. So much so that many of them were giving away their $100-plus tickets to the crew whenever they didn't feel like getting up at OhMyGodIt'sEarly hours to catch the transfers to the stadium. Which is where I come in. For the West Indies v. Australia match, there were eight crew tickets, and Thaddeus and I were among the lucky ones to win the lottery. Sweet. Buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks, I'm there.

The West Indies team takes the field at the beginning of the match:


For those of you who aren't in the know about cricket, which is probably most of you since I can't remember the last time I ever saw a cricket match back home, live or televised. C'mon, be honest, how many of you knew that Canada was even in this world cup? (We're not anymore, we were sent home after loosing three games straight, though I'm told we played well.) In fact my only connection to cricket before this was through my Australian roommate in second year of university. He used to go out on Saturday mornings in his whites with his cricket bat over his shoulder and come back some 8-10 hours later. He also used to have a cat scan taped to his bedroom door with the caption "For those of you in doubt, I do have a brain." Nuff said. But anyway, I digress. The point is, cricket is a looooong game. The eight-to-nine hours these world cup matches are lasting are apparently abridged versions of the up-to-two-day long test matches they have outside the world cup. Man, and I thought baseball was long.

Briefly, here's how it works: if you compare it to baseball, there are essentially only two innings, since each team only comes up to bat once. Within each inning, there are 50 "overs." Overs consist of six pitches (or "bowls") pitched to one of the two batters who's up. There are two batters on the field at the same time protecting little sticks (wickets) at opposite ends of the pitch. Unlike baseball, the batter's job isn't necessarily to hit the ball; his job is to protect the wickets, which the pitcher (bowler) is trying to knock over with the ball. If the bowler knocks over the wickets, the batter is out (and, just to confuse things, batters out are also called wickets, so when there are three batters out you would say "three wickets"). So, if the bowler bowls wide and the wickets aren't in danger of being knocked over, the batter doesn't have to do anything, and he just stands there. If hitting the ball is the best way to defend the wickets, that's what the batter does. However, like in baseball, if a fielder catches the ball before it hits the ground, the batter is also out. Otherwise, if the ball is hit far enough that the batters have time to run from one set of wickets to the other before before the ball can be thrown at the wickets and knock them over, that's what they do, and as many times as they can run from one wicket to the other is how many runs they score. Unlike in baseball, the batters have a choice about whether or not to run; if the ball hasn't been hit far enough and there's a chance it'll be fielded before they get back to the wickets, they just stand there waiting for it to be fielded. (There are also "home runs" but they're called fours and sixes depending on how far the ball is hit, cause that's how many runs they score, and again, the batters don't have to actually run, the points are just added automatically.) Since the winning team is the one that has the most runs, the batters obviously have an interest in scoring runs, but it's a little more strategic than in baseball. Anyway, the first team bats through 50 overs or until all their wickets are down (they get 10 outs). Whatever their score is at the end of their at-bat is what the second team has to surpass in 50 overs or less without losing all of their wickets. Simple, right? The whole game plan, though, means that there's a lot of standing around - waaaay more than in baseball. It also means that the second half of the game is a little more exciting that the first half since there's actually an objective to meet. Did I mention that each half takes about four hours, not including rain-delays? Rah-rah, siss-boom-bah.

Anyway, here we are at the beginning of the match, still fresh and full of enthusiasm, root-root-rooting for the home team in our duly-purchased Windies t-shirts.


And finally, as promised, here's a pic of me and Thaddeus, my new squeeze. Take a good look cause Guyanese passports don't travel very well. Still, I hope you'll all get to meet him eventually.

March 22, 2007: Cheeseburger in Paradise (Saint-Barthélémy)

I know I'm going back in time here with these next two posts, but I wanted to give you some of my impressions from my first month aboard. So without further ado...

I don't know what it is about this place that I love so much, but it's my favourite place to be in the Caribbean. Actually, that's not true, I know exactly what I love about this place: it's Frenchness. Take any island in the Caribbean: beautiful beaches, water the colour of gemstones, palm trees, sunshine, and locals that live by the steady but slow pace of nature: the sun, the moon, the tides, the rain that comes and goes. Paradise, right? But something's missing. Now make that island French, and suddenly it's a different world. Infrastructure development, all mod-cons, socialized medicine, and cuisine.

But St-Barts is different from all the other French islands. Thanks to the some savvy municipal planner who decided to keep St-Barts' status as a free port when the Swedes handed it back to the French over a hundred years ago, It's like the Disneyworld of the French Antilles: French culture on steroids. Wealth is so ubiquitous here it's like an invisible fog, as permeating as the mid-day heat. Everyone here has money, or else creates the illusion of it: spot more of the latest runway trends more on the backs of cafe and bistro patrons than in boutique windows; late-model cars bursting through narrow intersections; and all those in the know flocking to the newest "in" eatery for lunch (dinner is so passé). The tourists look out of place here with their baseball caps, baggy souvenir t-shirts and paunches. St-Bartians (it that's what they're really called, but it can't be: it sounds too much like Martians, it's just too gauche) all wear movie-star sunglasses; their hair is long and straight and glossy, or short and tousled for that bed-head-that's-not-really-bed-head look; their expensive clothes always hang or cling in just the right way, showing the perfect amount of perfectly tanned leg or delt or midriff. The women all pout in that perfectly sexy, distracted way while the men pretend to be having important conversations on cell phones while drinking blonde beers on open-air terraces so they can survey the people on sidewalks with slow, obvious gazes, only pausing to light cigarettes that their elegant hands absently fondle — just another fashion accessory.

You'd think it was all a veneer, this perfect chiqueness, a thin gloss, superficial and superflous — wasteful even, the showy displays for no reason other than because they can. But that's where the French are misunderstood: it's not superficial at all. I say it's rooted deep in their philosophy, a part of the culture. It has nothing to do with being ostentatious and everything to do with simply appreciating all the pleasures that life has to offer. Why not strive to eat the best foods, drink the best drinks, cover yourself in the best fabrics, enjoy as much as you can - food, sex, love, art, beauty. After all, what else is there to do in this life? And, with it's sheltered port, bustling city, pristine beaches and sleepy hillsides, what better place on Earth is there to live life as it should be lived? And who but the French would have seen it this way, and had the fortitude to withstand the constant demands of Western capitalism — bigger, better, faster, more — and the attitude to keep the American cultural invasion at bay? To slow down and take advantage of such a wonderful playground? No one but the French deserves St-Barts. And as a result, they've got the hottest place in the islands, where anyone who's anyone comes to play and where everyone else comes to bask in the tepid glow of second-hand fame. Sure, the French are haughty, but why shouldn't they be?

As an aside, St-Barts is also the place where Jimmy Buffet, that perennial favourite of Windjammer passengers (yes, most "Jammer-heads" are also "Parrot-heads") supposedly wrote "Cheeseburger in Paradise." Although there are many burger joints in the Caribbean that lay claim to that particular honour, Le Select in St-Barts probably has the strongest case. Anyway, whether or not he actually wrote the song there, Buffet — along with a good number of other celebrities — does dine at Le Select on his not-infrequent visits to St-Barts (either he or his yacht was spotted by passengers every time we were in port). That isn't where I was the night that Nicole Kidman decided to join our party, though; that was some other bar. Okay, she didn't really join our party. We were waaay too underdressed. To be honest, I wouldn't have even recognized her if someone else hadn't pointed her out to me. She's tiny. I'd say she looked like an anorexic teenager if it didn't sound so mean, but damn, it must be true about the camera adding 20 pounds. Anyway, that's my St. Barts celebrity story. I feel so blessed.

March 17: 2007: Balls, balls, balls.

Three words: Gay. Naked. Cruise. Welcome aboard. We had the honour of hosting the Gay Naturist club my first two weekw aboard the Mandalay. Fortunately, the first week of the two-week charter was clothed, so they broke me in gently. Pretty easy week, actually — not surprisingly, the men on this trip were more interested in, er, (insert diving euphemism of choice here: night diving, deep diving, cave diving, snorkelling, etc.) than the dives I had on offer. But still, when my manager told me I'd have to come down and meet the charter group at their private party the night before they boarded (and the night before I was due to join the ship) because the ship hadn't arrived yet and I was the only Windjammer representative on the island, he could have told me which charter it was instead of waiting for me to figure it out through the smirks and chuckles of Captain Cesar. All up, though, even the naked week wasn't that bad, once you got used to it. The worst of it was reboarding the ship whenever I came back from shore leave, when I usually forgot all about the charter. Being greeted by the full monty when you're not expecting it is a bit of a shocker. Actually, that wasn't the worst of it. What was worse was spending a week on a ship full of naked men and the only one worth actually looking at was the only one who wouldn't take off his clothes. Funniest moment: passengers going to get their lifejackets from their cabins for the mandatory safety drill and coming back wearing them... and nothing else. Naked old dude in a lifejacket. Maybe you had to be there.

Anyway, just be glad I don't have any photos.