And We Go Sailing – Icy Strait, Alaska – [08/18/2018]

I’ve been doing this for nearly 9 years now, and yet I still never get used to the feeling of the last cruise of a contract. It always feels…so strange. You get used to things you see, you get used to your room, you get used to your friends, you get adjusted to being in the same ports on the same days, to waking up in different places every morning…

You get used to it…

And then it stops.

And you have to get used to a whole  different thing; and that is just…impossible to explain perhaps to someone who hasn’t experienced it.

The guests this cruise are a mixed batch, most are nice enough (although there are always a few!) and they’re definitely enthusiastic. But as my current boss tactfully put it…there are some…eccentric ones. The downside of it being my last cruise is that it honestly gets a little hard to give this batch of people what I know they deserve. I far from work with one foot out the door, but in the last stretch before home it gets more difficult to pull myself to work in the morning, and I find myself more steadily wishing that I could just stay in and play L.A Noire with Amras all day (as such, we just end up playing it until 2am, don’t ask…it’s a stupidly addictive game).

In the meantime I’m just enjoying my final calls in some of my most favourite Alaskan ports. The suitcases are mostly packed except for the few clothes I need to go out in the next few days. I completely whipped Amras at pinball during our final call in Juneau (finally! 17,000,000 to 3,000,000! HA!) so that’s one high note to end the season on. In two days we’ll do our normal mall-crawl in Anchorage and with any luck I’ll get to go out to the zoo and commune with the wolves for a little while before I say goodbye to them for an indefinite period of time. We bought our last batch of mini-donouts from the salivation army stand in Icy Strait, and came back with our hair and clothes smelling of campfire smoke. And outside as I sit in the workshop, the sea is like glass, and if I were to take a picture of it you would probably accuse me of photoshopping.

I have my final report card in hand (one of two I’ve received this contract, since I’ve worked with a few different cruise directors), and while I don’t want to divulge the contents in a semi-public forum, I will say I’m happy with them. More than happy actually, this particular boss and I have a very strong and long-standing history and to be honest, I thought …well let’s just say I wasn’t expecting a glowing review. Sometimes it is very very nice to be proven totally wrong.

And so it is…ever onward on the sea…