Snorkeling in Hanauma Bay

Hanauma Bay is a Wildlife Refuge on Oahu, in a deeply sheltered bay. The waters are deep, with the sheer sides of the cliffs rising straight out of the water. At the head (foot) of the bay lies a beautiful, bright sandy beach, with palms and shade and abundant plant life. The waters are tropical blue, creating a picture-perfect image of an island getaway.

The park is also closed on Tuesdays. We usually dock in Honolulu on Tuesdays. However, one of the idiosyncrasies of this itinerary is that we change the order of ports at random intervals. Our first Hawaiian cruise had Nawiliwili before Honolulu, then four cruises later, we again had Nawiliwili on Tuesday and Honolulu on Wednesday. A group of us took full advantage of this occurrence and paid a visit to this remote site.

We took a long cab ride out, paid our entrance fee, waiting in the hot sun to watch a video on the importance of preservation (don’t touch the reef, folks), hiked our way down the cliffs (they were nicely paved, it wasn’t much of a hike, just a walk down a very steep incline) and arrived at one of the best snorkeling sites in the Hawaiian Islands.

There are black-tipped reef sharks in the deeper reaches of the bay, and all of us were gunning for a shark sighting. The shallow water was clogged with sand and tourists, so we all bolted for the breakwater. We made it out past the sheltering reef to find fewer people but still poor visibility. I headed straight out toward the mouth of the bay, hoping for a shark encounter. Thirty feet beyond the breakwater, the water cleared to leave me floating in 20-plus feet of crystal-clear caribbean-blue water, above picturesque reef sculptures, amid a smattering of vibrant tropical fish. The sheer vastness of the display was striking.

I didn’t see a single other snorkeler out in the clear water. I went to the opening of the bay and back, taking my time and exploring. The reef was far below me, but the water was clear, and the fish were interesting. I saw a few sea turtles (one adult, who led me to three babies), but no sharks. Slightly disappointing, but what can you do.

After about half an hour of battling the roughening waves, I headed back into shore. As soon as I hit the breakwater, I couldn’t see more than 3 feet around me, and people started bumping into me. It’s crazy what some people will settle for.

We met back up on the beach, since we had all snorkeled in different parts of the bay, then began the long journey back to the ship. What a nice way to spend the day.

Whale Watching in Maui

As a crew member, I can sign up to escort shore excursions. It’s hit or miss on which tours you get to go on, since there are a very limited number of escorts, but if you’re selected, you go on the tour for free. Escorting requires very little, usually a couple of head counts and sitting in the back of the bus.

This time in Lahaina, I went on the whale watching excursion. As I was waiting for the boat to get back from the previous whale watching tour, surrounded by older passengers with mobility issues, with the hot sun beating down on me, I had serious doubts about this excursion. I was second-guessing my decision to spend two hours on the open water with nothing but flat, glassy ocean to look at. A friend of mine had gone on the tour a few weeks earlier and seen only one whale.

But it was too late, so away I go. It blew me away.

We saw whales pretty constantly, some closer than others. The captain was great in terms of predicting behaviors and anticipating sightings. We followed a pair of adults for the better part of an hour, to be rewarded by them coming up and investigating our boat.

They spy-hopped us from a hundred yards, jumping above the surface to check us out, then swam over. They tooled around underneath our boat. We could see them through the crystal-clear water, especially the white patches under their pectoral fins. The light reflecting off their white patches was turned brilliant turquoise by the water. We could see the entire body of the whales as they investigated our boat. They surfaced about 50 feet from us.

It definitely surpassed my expectations, last-minute doubts and all.

Life Aboard: The Jones Act

Alright, listen up. This is your education for the day. A long time ago, America passed a law that no non-American sailing company could operate in exclusively American ports. They passed this law because Canadian ferry companies were drifting down to Seattle and putting good ole’ Americans out of business. Now these Canadian companies would have to ferry people from Seattle to Vancouver to the other side of the sound. Slightly inconvenient. So, the Jones Act.

So this law stays on the books, and the cruise industry comes about. Not many vessels are American-flagged (taxes, red tape, unions, ick), so not many cruises operate exclusively between American ports. Hence, every cruise itinerary will have a non-US port. Hence why our Hawaiian cruise sails out of LA and stops in Ensenada, Mexico.

Enter lovely Ensenada, Mexico, on the Baja California peninsula. It’s a little out of place on the LA-Hawaiian itinerary, since it’s not tropical and not very sophisticated.

But it’s our Jones Act port, and there’s plenty of cheap stuff for sale. And they take US dollars.

Another Day in Kauai

This time around, in Nawiliwili, a group of us rented a car to explore farther reaches of the island. Rental cars, unlike rental scooters, do not have distance limitations. With the ship’s naturalist in our number, we bee-lined for the bird refuge at Kilauea Lighthouse.

There were albatross, frigate birds, tropic birds and boobies. And the Hawaiian goose, the ne-ne.

After the lighthouse, we continued along the north shore to the town of Hanalei. We stopped for burgers at the famous Bubba’s Burgers, a fond memory from my childhood visits to the island. We continued down the road (the one and only on the island; directions are easy) to Tunnels Beach.

Tunnels is one of the most isolated, roughest and best snorkeling beaches on the island. A few years ago, the now-famous, now-professional young surfer was on an early morning surfing jaunt at Tunnels when she had her arm bitten off by a shark. She’s surfing strong, and the beach is a little less visited.

The surf was quite rough, but we trekked to where the reef met the beach. The waves calmed down significantly, and it was easy to walk right in. The water was rather cloudy, and the clouds kept covering the sun. Despite the poor visibility, there were plenty of fish, with some nice sized schools, making for some good snorkeling. There were a few sea turtles, but they completely paled in comparison to the giant seal lounging on the surface. Wait, what?

There was a 7-foot-long, 400-plus-pound Hawaiian Monk Seal coming up for air. It was staring some snorkelers in the face, watching them as they watched it. It took a few breaths and dove. We waited. Nine minutes later, it came back up. No one saw it come up. As we were hovering over the 20-foot-deep crevice it disappeared into, we look around and there it was, chilling out on the surface, getting some air. A minute or two later, it went back down into the crevice. Wow. It came up one more time before we had to head back to the ship. We were close enough to touch it. It yawned, looked around, took a few breaths, blinked its huge black eyes, and dove. It seemed so gentle.

Hawaiian monk seals are endemic to the Hawaiian Islands; they’re found nowhere else in the world. They’re an endangered species, travel alone and are rarely seen. Again, wow.

Then it was back to the ship in a nerve-wracking race against the clock. We were late back to the ship by 5 minutes, and luckily found it still at the dock. Everyone who works on a cruise ship hears the horror stories of crew left in port. If you miss the boat, you’re responsible for the cost of rejoining the ship. The ship waits for no one. In addition to a stressful day of (potentially expensive) travel, there are disciplinary consequences for missing the boat. All we could think of was how to get ourselves to Maui. We made it on the ship, on the last gangway (the others had already been stowed), as everything was being packed up and shoved onboard. Lesson learned.

But even the frantic scramble back to the ship didn’t turn my opinion of the day. A Hawaiian Monk Seal…

Life Aboard: Guest Entertainers

One thing that I didn’t quite realize when I got onboard was that there is live entertainment every single night of every single cruise. I didn’t really think about it, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise. The other thing that I didn’t quite realize was that no one else can run the lighting rig. No one else even knows how to turn it on. Now, combine live entertainment every night with no one else doing lights. Live entertainment requires lights. I’m required if lights are required. Hence, I will be working every single night of every single cruise for my entire contract.

These two realizations came quite early to me, since these facts were introduced to me my first day aboard. The full implications haven’t really settled in until now, though. A few months in, I’ve worked every single night for the last two and a half months. And now I realize that I’m not even half done, and I’ll be working every night for the next 4 months. Oh.

It’s not a daunting concept, it’s just my job. It makes me feel proud. I’m a professional. These guest entertainers, whose job it is to fly around to cruise ships and set up their act in mere hours, come in to the theater and start interacting with us. It’s all very professiona

l, and they ask for some special effects or some specific looks, and we can deliver. We’re professional entertainers. I’m a professional lighting operator, capable of programming a vast variety of effects at the drop of a hat.

For example, a couple nights ago, 10 minutes before a show, a guest entertainer calls up to the booth, from backstage, and requests a red wash with enough front light to not need follow spots. He told me what he was wearing, and then he moved on to sound requests. Enough information given. I programmed the show in blind right then and there, cleaned up the transitions, and started the show.

Some of our guest entertainers’ acts are more lighting-intensive than others. Some want talk washes for the whole hour-long show. Some have their own show discs that need to be repatched and focused to fit our rig. Some just have a list of songs that they might or might not do and I need to light their whole act. This last type of entertainer is the most time consuming. Sometimes I’ll program their show the night before, sometimes during the day of the show, sometimes I’ll adapt another entertainer’s show from a previous cruise during sound check.

As I get more familiar with the rig, and more comfortable with the control board, I cut down on programming time and do more impressive stuff. It’s quite fun to sit back and just look at what I’ve done. I’ve never run a rig this extensive and expensive before.

Scooting around Kauai

After the installation of British Invasion was complete, I had plenty of time on my hands. Now I can start to enjoy the regular schedule of working on a cruise ship. My first two months were anomalous.

A regular schedule means being able to get off in port. Except for the aforementioned In-Port Manning days, when maintenance and laundry are done, I have port days off. There’s always evening entertainment, but it’s usually after we’ve sailed. So I get a day in the Hawaiian Islands.

This Nawiliwili, on the island of Kauai, I rented scooters with a couple friends. I ran into them in the little shopping center right off the ship, and with nothing else to do, I decided to accompany them on a scooter adventure. Why not.

Our little scooters were pretty awesome. They were easy to ride, easy to control and went pretty quickly. On the downhills we could get up to 50 mph. The roads on Kauai are pretty friendly, with only one highway, with a usual speed limit of 40. The country roads have speed limits of 25. We felt very safe along the roads, and only got yelled at a couple times by passing motorists.

We drove around the area heading to some waterfalls and scenic drives. We went up the Wailua River, saw some waterfalls from a distance, looked over the royal valley of Kauai and visited some ruins of temples. We puttered around inland to an arboretum, heading to the end of the road, where the river washed over the pavement. We headed back to a beach for a quick dip in the water, since it was a hot day. We went to Lydgate Park, a beach that I had visited as a kid. It has an amazing playground, which we did not explore, and a sheltered cove with good snorkeling, which we did explore, briefly.

After a quick stop at the beach, we headed to a secluded waterfall and swimming hole that the scooter rental guy had told us about. After getting turned around, thanks to our low quality map, we followed a local to the right place. We hiked down to the falls, which were completely deserted. We had a few minutes to ourselves to contemplate the 20+ foot drop and rope swing before other people made their way down. They had been there before and assured us that the bottom was very deep and it was safe to jump. So jump we did.

It was my first time jumping off a cliff. I’ve fallen off one (a small one on Vieques in Puerto Rico), and jumped off a ladder partway up a waterfall (in Israel), but I have never before stood on top of a cliff, with a stream falling away next to me, looking down at an indistinctly-far-away pool and jumped. When I went, the fall was long enough to give an experience of falling. Not just a brief sensation that you get when diving into a pool, or jumping off an 8’ platform in the theater. Not the sensation from a really high bounce on a trampoline. Something distinctly different. You’re in a different level of gravity as the structures holding your insides no longer take weight. Free fall. And then it was gone. Such a brief experience, but something completely different.

We were getting close to the crew all-aboard time, so we had to leave the falls before we would have liked, then scoot back to the rental place. We made it aboard with time to spare, after a wonderful tour of the southwest corner of Kauai.

Life Aboard: In Port Manning

In every port, the ship needs a minimum number of crew onboard in case of emergency. The duty of staying onboard rotates through the crew by department. Each department is responsible for a certain number of crew members onboard. This rotation is called in-port manning.

Once or twice per 14-day itinerary, I have IPM duty. With the install going on, I hardly notice when I’m allowed to get off or not. Once the install is over, it will be more relevant, but there is always maintenance to be done. I'm visiting the same itinerary for 6 months. If I don't see Hawaii this time around, I'll see it next week.

Life Aboard: International Theater Jargon

Here on the Golden Princess, we’re in the middle of a show install for a new production show. Head office sent out a lighting tech a month in advance, to get the plot rehung and get all the additions and changes squared away. A couple weeks ago another lighting tech got on, to do some reprogramming and some video set-up. That makes three lighting techs on board, and we’re from three different nationalities. We’re Canadian, English and American. And we speak three different languages.

We’re all experienced lighting technicians, but every day we work together, we find some differences in how we do things. Things are done differently in different theaters on the same block, so it’s no surprise that things are done different across international borders. The biggest difference is language.

There are the inevitable pronunciation differences from the three countries, which we all acknowledge, and constantly make fun of each other for. Then there are the turns of phrase and the idioms unique to each country. These are fun to adopt. Then there are the completely indecipherable differences. They make work difficult.

A good example is when the British lighting tech found out (as if it were a big secret) that the correct way to say the word mauve is with the same vowel sound as in caught. He pronounces it mOv, like stove. Wrong.

That was a high point of contention, until we got to soldering. Then he had bigger battles to fight.

It’s been a cross-cultural learning experience. And not just in the theater.

Life Aboard: The Food

The food here is not as spectacular as one might imagine. Yeah, everyone goes on a cruise ship to eat. But you don’t work on a cruise ship to eat.

There is always a variety of food available (24 hours a day). There are the unhealthy options of cheeseburgers and fries, pizza and dessert, but there are always healthy options too. Your diet depends on what you choose.

The average passenger will gain 1-2 pounds per day of the cruise.

The thing to avoid with the food is excess. The plates they make available are twice as big as normal plates. The buffet line stretches on and on. The dessert server encourages you to take another piece of pie. The mess has entrees and buffets available.

But once you step back and realize that the food’s not going away, and you’ll see the same menu or layout in two weeks time, it’s easy to eat manageable portions.

There are a variety of dining options for the crew on board. The complicated part is remembering when you’re allowed to go to which. The crew mess is always open, the staff mess is sometimes open, the officer’s mess is occasionally open, with service at certain times. The passenger buffet is open all the time, but it’s only available at certain specific hours during sea days, and different specific hours during port days. Or not at all when it’s busy. The pizza place is usually open, except on certain port or sea days. Same with the hamburger grill. The panini shop is always not available, except to contractors on the crew, who have passenger privileges. The steakhouse and trattoria are available through reservation. And I still haven’t learned when the sushi bar is open or available.

Life Aboard: Plowing through Time Zones

Our home port is Los Angeles, then we head to the Hawaiian islands for four days. The Hawaiian islands are 3 hours different from LA, at this time of year, since they don’t change their clocks for daylight savings time. There’s a one-hour difference off the coast of California, as we enter Alaska Daylight Time. There are no time zones between Alaska Daylight and Hawaiian Standard. So we make them up.

In the four-day voyage between California and Hawaii, we change the clocks one hour every other day. Going to Hawaii, we get one more hour of sleep every other day.

Coming back, we lose one.

It’s a gauntlet of long days whose nights actually do get shorter. It’s not just our imagination.

Life Aboard: Work

Who knew working on cruise ships is super busy? Well, if I had stopped to think about it, they have to get the most out of their crew, since they don't want people just taking up space. The vessel is foreign-flagged, so American Unions have nothing to do with the ship. There are no strict rules about who can do which tasks. Everyone lends a hand and does whatever needs doing.

I pulled a 12 hour day today, and a 15 hour day yesterday. Tomorrow I get to sleep in until 9am, and we're not going through a time zone so we don't lose an hour. That's almost too easy.

I had an 8-hour work day a few days in a row, when I was able to get off and see a bit of Hawaii. That felt like a day off. Until I counted my hours and realized I worked a full day.

We count our hours here to make sure no one is overworked (minimum 10 hours of rest in any 24 hour period, minimum of a 6-hour continuous break every 24 hours). If not for that, I think the days would run by in a blurry haze. Now I can keep track of the hours ticking by.

I enjoy being busy, but I especially enjoy working on a project. Luckily, I've found myself in the middle of an install, which is a huge overarching project for the next couple of months. That gives shipboard projects a nice context, as I do maintenance, program smaller shows and remount a show from last season.

Work work work.

Live Aboard: A Day at Sea

Days of the week don’t matter on board a cruise ship. There are only work days. We work 7 days a week. The distinguishing factor between days is whether it’s a port day or a sea day. On port days, the destination goes a long way toward entertaining passengers. On sea days, it’s all on us.

My usual day starts with a lecture around 9 in the morning. There are enrichment lectures about many topics relating to our destinations (i.e. piracy) and port talks, going over the highlights of each destination. There’s also a naturalist onboard, from the park service.

After that, there’s always maintenance to do, but we’re concentrating on remounting a show that’s been in storage for 6 months, then we’ll load in another new show. In the middle of those long-term processes we have guest entertainers who come on and need their shows programmed. Lately, we’ve been having rehearsals onstage from 11am to 3pm.

Then it’s a movie, which a member of the crew takes care of, which means I can’t do maintenance work and don’t have to be in the theater. That’s a nice forced break.

After that, it’s time to set up for the evening’s entertainment, with last minute changes or fixes. I set up any additional lights onstage and check the rig. Then it’s preshow and house open, and off to dinner or change, or both, depending on how much time is left before show call.

There are usually two shows at night, with about an hour break between them. That’s the alternative dinner break, since nothing can be done, either onstage or programming notes, since the house remains open.

After the show, we strike the setup. Then it’s either programming for the next day’s acts, or bed time. My day usually ends around 11:30pm if there’s no late night programming to be done. If there is, a night can end anywhere from midnight to 4am.

Life Aboard: Getting on the Internet

The internet here onboard is via satellite communications. This is slow, unreliable and expensive. It’s odd going back to a culture not linked in to the internet. Remember the 1990s? No one carries cell phones, we all have pagers (and use them!), Wikipedia is not at hand to answer questions, and email is checked about as often as postal mail is on land.

Life Aboard: Uniforms

We are required to wear our uniform every day, as you would expect of a ship’s crew. However, for the production department, our uniform only applies to daytime duties. We are not allowed to wear our uniform at night, which is when we happen to be working the most (since our shows are at night). Instead of our uniform (company-issued black polos and khaki pants), we’re required to wear our own clothes, according to the dress code of the day. That means either smart casual or formal.

Never did I imagine it, but I have become quite good at setting up and striking lights for production shows in heels and a dress.

Being American is for Passengers

On cruise ships the crew is multi-national. There are people from all areas of the globe. Countries from all 6 continents are represented. One of the most surprising statistics among nationalities is the lack of Americans as crew. I’m one of less than a dozen Americans in the ship’s company. With a crew of over 1,000, that means that Americans make up less than 1% of the crew.

There are American guest entertainers onboard, and they really boost our numbers, but they’re not members of the ship’s company.

Americans make up about 75% of the passengers.

It's pretty amazing to live amongst a multi-national community, with so many cultures aboard.

Theaters and Ships

A lot of theater jargon comes from ships, since stage crew were often sailors who were looking for work between ships. The intricate rigging requirements of a theater are similar to the demands of a ship’s rigging. Knots are a necessary working requirement for climbers, sailors and theater technicians. Probably a few more professions in there, too, but this is my blog.

In old times, theaters and ships were mutually exclusive, drawing on the same skill sets of the same work force, but at completely separate times, in completely separate locales. Ships employed sailors on the sea, theaters employed sailors on the land.

It’s quite interesting to be on a ship while doing theater. While the two professions originally shared the sailor, each has evolved significantly. Now one person cannot do both jobs, unless they’re on two career paths. I could no more switch to maintaining the engines than an engineer could switch to programming moving lights. They’re similar skill sets, perhaps, but with completely different applications, and not interchangeable.

But it is still neat, when looking for some extra rope, to just run to the bosun and ask for some more line.

Guest Entertainers

Princess gets some good entertainment acts on their ships, apparently. I'm not very current in my live entertainer knowledge, so I haven't heard of anyone, but we have comics from last comic standing, a guy about to open an act in Vegas, the Beatlemaniacs and a spattering of other entertainers.

It's my job to design the lights for them. Sometimes the cues for them are already in the board (since acts occasionally rotate around to a ship they've been to before), sometimes they just need a general wash, and sometimes they're quite specific about what they want.

I spent 4 hours last night programming one of the specific requests for a concert tonight. That was a fun and rewarding undertaking, allowing me to play around with these toys that I'm now in charge of. The only down side was that I was programming from midnight to 4am, after a long day of fixing problems and running important conference events, starting at 6:45 in the morning.

It made for a long day.

This is where I work.

It’s a 15 million dollar theater spreading over 5 decks from pit to top of fly loft, and two decks for the audience. It seats 722 people in comfortable, well-spaced chairs. It has 3 automated lifts and 5 knife tracks in the stage for automation, 24 automated linesets, 4 overstage lighting box trusses, 30 speakers, 3 projectors, 2 front of house lighting trusses, 2 genie lifts and $750,000 worth of lighting equipment.

Here’s my side of the booth, with 4 consoles in my control, along with a video playback system and two spotlights. I mostly deal with the Whole Hog III, but I also have an Expression 3 desk, a 4-channel video mixer and a pyrotechnics control board.

In the theater, there are lectures, culinary demonstrations, movies, comedy acts, bands, talent shows and production shows. Everyday is different, but my schedule largely depends on whether we are at sea or in port. While at sea, we need to plan multiple activities at all times all day long. The Princess Theater is a big part of those entertainments, so sea days are busy for us. There’s usually a lecture in the morning, a movie in the early afternoon, another lecture or movie later, then two to three shows per night. In port, there are far fewer daytime activities, with maybe a movie or two, then the shows at night. I’m not responsible for movies, so that’s my time off. In between events, I rehearse shows with the company, design and program lights for upcoming acts, perform maintenance on the lighting rig, and currently, I help install the new show that’s getting loaded in for the next two months.

It’s a consistently busy schedule, and when paired with the project of learning my way around the ship, figuring out meal times and where I’m allowed to eat, and shipboard etiquette, it’s enough to keep me busy. But I’m thankful for the new show install, which makes everything a challenge. I like challenges.

A Brief Stop in Seattle

On our Alaska itinerary, our home port was Seattle, Washington. I did not get a chance to see it my first time there, since we had to load on our new show, but I did get a chance to see it my second time around. Which was fortunate, since it was also the last visit there this season.

I jumped on a bus to down town, walked around and settled into the 3rd Starbucks that I found. That seems to be a good rule, since the first one you see is right as you get somewhere. The second one is pretty soon after, but by the time you get to the 3rd, you’re ready for a bit of a sit-down. This rule works in the Pacific Northwest. Probably in major metropolitan areas as well.

I spent some time on the internet, since it was both free and fast. I caught up on my Wikipedia reference use, checked my mail and researched what I should do with my few hours in Seattle.

After that, it was look around the city briefly, do some shopping for necessities, and head back to the ship. It seems like all ports are falling into this pattern, but I’m hoping to do more excursions or more adventurous outings in the future. I chalk it up to both being busy and still settling in. Both of those things should pass.

I'm on a SHIP

I have been led to believe that a boat is a vessel that can go on or be carried by another vessel. Like a lifeboat. A ship can do no such thing.

So apparently I'm on a ship. Although there is debate as to whether our small Golden Princess would fit on the Gargantuan of the Seas, I think the Golden is still a ship.

Seasick

It’s hard to grasp the sheer power of the ocean.

Something about being aboard a 113,000 ton, 17-deck-high cruise ship that’s getting tossed about like a rag doll in 20-foot seas helps to drive the point home.

I have yet to gain my sea legs.

One Week at Sea

It's been one week since I went to sea. My world has changed.

I've been working long days, over 12 hours each day, to try to get organized, settled and up to speed. There are trainings that I have to attend, lectures I have to babysit, acts I have to design lights for and shows I have to run. Besides all that, the rig that I walked in on is in sore need of maintenance. Lamps are blown in most of the conventional units, the intelligent lighting fixtures stop working on a rotating (but inconsistent) basis, gel is burning through, and dust covers everything. I have to learn a new console, on top of it all.

In the middle of that mess, another show is loading on and getting ready to be installed, as the Golden Princess' entertainment gets upgraded along with the rest of the fleet's. Luckily, a lighting technician came with the install, so he's here for 2 months to help.

So it's a very busy time on the Golden. Unusually so. Usually handovers from one crew member to the next, at the end of contracts, take 1 week. Sometimes they're longer, especially for new hires on their first contract (like me), who need to get used to ship life as well as used to the rig and ship procedures. My handover lasted two days.

Added to the theater part of things, the whole ship is abuzz. We are at the end of the Alaskan season, and we have a repositioning cruise next week, taking us from Seattle to LA. On that cruise, 200 Princess VIPs will be coming on board. Something like the president, the CEO, the vice presidents of all the departments, etc etc. So everyone's preoccupied with that. That's over my head, and I don't worry myself with any of the preparations. I have enough light bulbs to change. It is annoying when all of the carpet gets ripped up around you, though.

After the repositioning cruise, we have a special luncheon on board for the members of the UN summit in LA. There will be high security and secret service, FBI, etc etc on board. Woah.

Then it's 4 days at sea, then Hawaii.

This week has been very instructive, but I suspect next week will be equally enlightening.

I'm on a BOAT

Yesterday I joined the Golden Princess, a grand class ship operated by Princess Cruise Lines.

I flew to Ketchikan, Alaska to meet the ship mid-route to join. I flew all day Wednesday, then will join on Thursday morning.

Talk about a whirlwind day. I'm still on Eastern Time, here in Alaska (4 hours back), so the early start didn't phase me, but the day kept going. From joining and signing on, to putting my stuff in a random cabin to getting a tour of the ship to getting introduced to the theater, the morning was long. The afternoon consisted of plunging right in and learning the console and the idiosyncrasies of the theater, getting the hand over from the previous lighting supervisor.

There were some quick meal breaks and some down time sprinkled in, then it was a two-show night. The previous lighting supervisor ran the first show, then it was my turn. After few hours on the ship, I ran the evening's main entertainment.

It just goes to show, theater is theater. As cobbled together as my experience is, and as horrible as my formal education was, somewhere along the line I managed to learn all the necessary procedures and protocols that I can walk onto a 3,000 passenger vessel, step into its lavish theater, sit at the control for its multi-million dollar rig, and run a show. I think I'll make it.