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.