Down to the Numbers – At Sea – 12/03/2011

152 Days

61 ports

47 Sea days

9 overnights

10 major holidays

That’s what’s left of this contract.

By the time I get home in April, I will have served approximately 308 days aboard (spread rather unevenly between two ships, 3 months on one, 7 on the other), called at 80 unique ports of call (not counting the many repeats, were I to count all the repeat ports, and all the overnights that number would jump substantially higher, especially considering that all of Alaska was repeat ports) and suffered through well over 100 sea days. I’ll have rounded Cape Horn, seen Easter Island, cruised Antarctica and Pitcairn Island, crossed the equator twice and the international dateline at least three times.

I’ll have spent a grand total of four hours with my big sister…played far too many late night games of Killer Bunnies, watched only three quarters of the movies on my hard-drive…said goodbye to a lot of good friends and met a lot of new ones, nursed a few heartbreaks (not all of them my own), and watched at least one family member walk down the gangway.

It will have been nearly a year.

Barely half-way over, and this has already been one helluva ride…

A lot of people have asked me how I’m handling such a long contract. In all honesty, it’s not as hard as you’d think. After a while you simply stop thinking about it, the ship just becomes home. You get up, you go to work, you go home, you sleep. You follow basically the same routine that you would on shore; only every so often the floor lurches under your feet and reminds you that you’re still at sea.

The Grand Voyage is winding to a close, tomorrow will be the last day of it, which means a lot of us are preparing to go home, where-as a very few of us are preparing to watch everyone go home. I’m not sure of the exact ratio of those who are staying on board through Christmas, but I know it’s not very many…in two days time when we dock in LA, there will be a massive crew change over. Some will come back, others – like the majority of the cast – are done with ships forever.

525,600 minutes…

Santa hats, jingle bells and fun in the sun…here we come