{"id":1051,"date":"2012-04-06T13:50:23","date_gmt":"2012-04-06T08:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=1051"},"modified":"2013-06-17T19:43:47","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T19:43:47","slug":"splashdance-at-sea-04032012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=1051","title":{"rendered":"Splashdance \u2013 At Sea \u2013 [04\/03\/2012]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Those of you who have actually sailed with my particular line before may think you\u2019ve been to a Lido deck Pool Party. The truth is though, unless you\u2019ve been sailing with us a long time, you haven\u2019t. 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\u2019t real pool parties, they\u2019re just BBQ\u2019s with a few extra flowers and some drink specials thrown in. This is what we\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

No, we\u2019re not doing one of those pathetic new-format pool parties guys, we\u2019re doing an old-style pool party, and I\u2019m going to need all hands on deck to make it work<\/em><\/p>\n

Two hours. Two solid hours.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>, which made me laugh hysterically) \u2013 hosting increasingly insane party games (some of which were almost<\/em> as disturbing as that \u201c<\/em>pass the orange\u201d game you see at New Year\u2019s 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\u2019t really allowed to say \u2018no\u2019. Besides, the guy could lead, a rare find indeed these days.<\/p>\n

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) \u2013 but somehow, we managed exactly that. The guests had a ball, and I haven\u2019t seen some of them laugh so hard \u2013 or even smile for that matter \u2013 in a very long time.<\/p>\n

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\u2019re all in full uniform, and we\u2019re all sweltering, but it\u2019s a sea day, the pools aren\u2019t open to crew on a sea day. Usually. It was the DJ who shrugged and said<\/p>\n

If you cannonball in, we\u2019ll go with you.<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

You might want to move…okay team, on three…one….two…<\/em><\/p>\n

SPLASH!!<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u2019m sure someone somewhere has photographs, but since it was unexpected, none of us had cameras ready to pass off.<\/p>\n

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\u2019m fine, nothing hurt but my pride)…<\/p>\n

But all in all? Definitely a good pick-me-up for the middle of a stretch of 5 very long sea days…<\/p>\n

After this we\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

24 more days…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those of you who have actually sailed with my particular line before may think you\u2019ve been to a Lido deck Pool Party. The truth is though, unless you\u2019ve been sailing with us a long time, you haven\u2019t. Not a real … 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-1051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-world-voyage-2012"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-gX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051","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=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2335,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions\/2335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}