Those of you who have actually sailed with my particular line before may think you’ve been to a Lido deck Pool Party. The truth is though, unless you’ve been sailing with us a long time, you haven’t. Not a real one. The Pool Parties now, that are hosted on the Alaska cruises and pretty much every other itinerary than the GWV aren’t real pool parties, they’re just BBQ’s with a few extra flowers and some drink specials thrown in. This is what we’ve all gotten used to though, so when the CD announced that we were going to do a Pool Party yesterday the entire team inwardly rolled its eyes.
No, we’re not doing one of those pathetic new-format pool parties guys, we’re doing an old-style pool party, and I’m going to need all hands on deck to make it work
Two hours. Two solid hours.
Two hours in the baking hot sun (which caused us all to delve into the prize bags and rummage out baseball caps for ourselves, which caused the DJ to tell me that I reminded him of Geena Davis circa League of Their Own, which made me laugh hysterically) – hosting increasingly insane party games (some of which were almost as disturbing as that “pass the orange” game you see at New Year’s Eve parties), that ranged from limbo lines to conga-lines…and you try doing a full out samba in the blazing sun at top speed! But when a guest asks you to dance, you aren’t really allowed to say ‘no’. Besides, the guy could lead, a rare find indeed these days.
Keeping a party going for two hours is a feat that takes a true team to manage, especially since we were down one team member (our YPC had to stay with the one child on board who elected not to come down and join the fun) – but somehow, we managed exactly that. The guests had a ball, and I haven’t seen some of them laugh so hard – or even smile for that matter – in a very long time.
When it was all just starting to wind down and the last few people were dancing to the last few songs that the orchestra was providing, we were all sitting at the edge of the pool in a somewhat unofficial debrief, and the cruise director says something along the lines of it being a day for jumping in the pool. At this we all simply looked at each other and shook our heads, we’re all in full uniform, and we’re all sweltering, but it’s a sea day, the pools aren’t open to crew on a sea day. Usually. It was the DJ who shrugged and said
If you cannonball in, we’ll go with you.
There was a split second of absolute silence, and then a small frenzy of kicked off shoes, shed jewellery and stowed glasses that, when finished, found us all standing in a line at the far end of the aft-deck pool, looking down at the guests who had hurriedly made their way to the shallow end to look back at us.
You might want to move…okay team, on three…one….two…
SPLASH!!
This is the second time in two weeks I have ended up in a pool fully dressed. The thing is though, this was in my uniform, my day uniform is cotton and polyester and weighs a ton when wet….to say I looked like a drowned rat would be an insult to the rat! But it was too good an opportunity to pass up. I’m sure someone somewhere has photographs, but since it was unexpected, none of us had cameras ready to pass off.
It took me 15 minutes to even attempt to dry off and wring out my uniform and hang it in the shower to drip-dry overnight (trying to find a dryer in the crew laundry room on a sea day evening is worse than trying to find a needle in a alp-sized haystack), and a five minute trip to medical to have them check if I really was okay from the subsequent slip I took on the deck after spluttering out of the pool (and yes I’m fine, nothing hurt but my pride)…
But all in all? Definitely a good pick-me-up for the middle of a stretch of 5 very long sea days…
After this we’re in Egypt, and then, at long last, we reach Europe, a week of back-to-back ports and then we are truly on the home stretch.
24 more days…