{"id":1010,"date":"2012-03-23T17:05:54","date_gmt":"2012-03-23T10:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=1010"},"modified":"2013-06-17T18:53:55","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T18:53:55","slug":"splish-splash-at-sea-03232012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=1010","title":{"rendered":"Splish-Splash \u2013 At Sea \u2013 [03\/23\/2012]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Every year during the GWV we choose at least one charity to raise funds for. Our guests are usually generous, and I really do believe people are good at heart. Present them with a worthy cause and they will step up to the plate. Usually the charity chosen is an orphanage, and this year is no different.<\/p>\n

The means by which we raise the money aren\u2019t always conventional is the thing<\/p>\n

If any of you have ever been to an old-style country fair, you\u2019ve probably seen a dunk tank. At the very least I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve seen them in comic books or courtesy of Hollywood.\u00a0 Well, with the help of the stage hands and several (mostly) willing volunteers, we created one of our own.<\/p>\n

So it was that I found myself dressed in work-out clothes that I didn\u2019t mind getting drenched, perched on a hinged seat suspended several feet above the surface of the Lido pool, with my legs swinging above the water, heckling the guests who had paid $5 for three chances to hit the target that would tip me over into the waves.<\/p>\n

Come on, still dry! You pitch like a girl!<\/em><\/p>\n

All for charity of course.<\/p>\n

Unlike a conventional dunk-tank set up which requires you to hit a spring loaded target which then pulls the seat out of the way, ours was man-powered. The seat was attached to a giant level that was held by one of the stage hands, when someone hit the target, he would actually tip his fellow crew members into the drink. He was having way too much fun doing this I might add.<\/p>\n

I will say that our guests can\u2019t aim as well as we thought, it took a good five minutes for someone to hit the target to send me splashing over the side. Which was fine, because the more tries it took to dunk someone, the more money we raised for the kids. When I finally hit the water, I spluttered to the surface, shook the hair out of my eyes and hauled myself out into the waiting embrace of a warm towel and stood to watch my co-workers suffer the same treatement for a while before helping to run around collecting the tennis balls that didn\u2019t make the target. As the event went on the people being dunked got to be more and more prominent members of the crew, third from the end our cruise director took the plunge, and when he surfaced he held up his hands for silence<\/p>\n

Now the game changes, because you see, now $5 a throw is not good enough. Because the next person in the hot seat is your Hotel Manager<\/em><\/p>\n

Yes, the hotel manager hit the drink \u2013 very nearly at the hands of his wife, who was most upset that she didn\u2019t have better aim –\u00a0 in full uniform (including shoes) and swam like a fish to the other side of the pool before surfacing to massive cheers.<\/p>\n

And last but not least.<\/p>\n

Starting the bidding for first throw at $40, for a chance to dunk your *Captain*<\/em><\/p>\n

$150 won the right to tip the master of the vessel into the pool, a right that the winning guest handed over to the Captain\u2019s wife! And he went down with a smile and a salute.<\/p>\n

And I don\u2019t think any of us have laughed so hard in a very long time.<\/p>\n

In total we raised $775 for the orphanage from that one event alone, when combined with the other two fundraising events that have taken place over the last week we\u2019ve raised over $2500 for the cause.<\/p>\n

That is definitely worth getting wet for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every year during the GWV we choose at least one charity to raise funds for. Our guests are usually generous, and I really do believe people are good at heart. Present them with a worthy cause and they will step … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-world-voyage-2012"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-gi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1010"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2270,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions\/2270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}