It’s always towards the end of a contract that you realize how fast the time has really gone. When I boarded my current ship in Papeete, Tahiti back in January, it seemed like the 3.5 months of my contract was stretching in front of me like an endless highway, winding off into the distance with our final destination far out of sight. There was plenty of time. Endless, bottomless wells of time
But there isn’t. Even more so than on land, where time flies quickly enough, on ships there really isn’t. Time is a liquid thing here, a premium currency that – if it could be made solid – could be traded, bought and sold like stocks on the market. Time doesn’t just fly when you’re shipside; it vanishes, whipping away behind you before you have a chance to register its occurrence.
If it’s Monday this must be Bora Bora….
If it’s Tuesday this must be Dubai…
If it’s Wednesday this must be Jordan…
If it’s Thursday this must be the Med…
If it’s Sunday this must be Athens…
And before you know it…if it’s April 26th…that must be Fort Lauderdale.
Your life moves differently when you live below the waterline (or, for those lucky few who bear the stripes, above it), the ratio is said to be one ship-day = three land-days. We have conflicts of course, we have petty disagreements, personality clashes, break-ups, make-ups and catfights, but it all happens in the blink of an eye, because you simply don’t have time to focus on those kinds of things. Relationships form, dissipate and reform with a speed that baffles the mind.
You think you know someone, only to turn around twice to find you don’t know them at all. You think you know the woman in the mirror, only to find that you wake up one morning to see a different person looking back at you…different, stronger, somehow changed, and wondering exactly what happened to the last – often incredible, often indescribable (sometimes bizarre and stressful) – three months of her life.
Never has the quote been more apt:
“This is the great theatre of life, admission is free, taxation is mortal, you come when you can, you leave when you must, the show is continuous. Goodnight.”
you are amazing