{"id":428,"date":"2011-09-04T19:38:02","date_gmt":"2011-09-05T02:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=428"},"modified":"2011-09-04T19:38:02","modified_gmt":"2011-09-05T02:38:02","slug":"i-could-have-missed-the-pain-seattle-09022011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=428","title":{"rendered":"I Could Have Missed the Pain – Seattle [09\/02\/2011]"},"content":{"rendered":"

~ Some things are better left to chance, I could have missed the pain, but I\u2019d have had to miss the dance~<\/em><\/p>\n

I always get retrospective near the end of a contract; probably everyone here has noticed that it\u2019s a bit of a theme with me. I think it just goes with the territory, every contract is like a New Year\u2019s Eve, you make resolutions for the next one, you hang on fiercely to some people and you let others go.<\/p>\n

This contract has been wonderful and heart wrenching at the same time. As they almost all are. It took me a long time to get settled on this ship, and now just when I\u2019ve started to feel comfortable with her, I\u2019m leaving her.<\/p>\n

There is never anything on any ship that\u2019s predictable. You think you know how things are going to go, you armor up against one possibility and something else comes and hits you out of left field. I suppose that\u2019s part of the charm. Part of the reason we do what we do in the first place. There are some things that have happened in the last three months that \u2013 at the time \u2013 couldn\u2019t be over with fast enough, that now I look back on and go \u201cyeah, but if it hadn\u2019t have happened\u2026then\u2026where would I be?\u201d. Like the title says..I could<\/em> have missed the pain, I could have confined myself to my cabin, seen no one, done nothing\u2026but what else<\/em> would I have missed?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m just struck by how quickly the season has gone. I don\u2019t remember the Alaska season going this quickly the first time I did it.<\/p>\n

As of today, we are the only ship \u2013 not just in our fleet, but in almost every fleet<\/em> \u2013 that\u2019s got more than one Alaskan cruise left. Everyone else is on their last one, we have three. And this is where we enter into challenge territory, because this is when the prices start to get into the bargain basement. You wouldn\u2019t think this would be a big deal, but it makes a huge<\/em> difference in the make-up of our clientele. My line tends to cater more towards middle-class or higher, our prices aren\u2019t usually within range of much else. Except at the end of the season. Our cruise director says that these are Oil n\u2019 Water cruises, because the normal clientele looks down on the \u201clower\u201d clientele that comes on at the time of year, and you start getting a clash. Plus it\u2019s a universal rule that the less a passenger pays, the more they actually want. Usually because the idea of \u201ccost\u201d is relative, $100 is nothing to someone who has millions, but a whole heck-of-a-lot to someone who only has $500.<\/p>\n

All of this adds up to the fact that the crew has to work a lot harder. The people get harder to please, and in reality we have less to offer them. You see, Alaska is shutting down. For the season that is. This is probably the last week that all the shops will be fully functional, after this the merchants that spend the summer in Alaska will pack up, board up and follow us to the Caribbean and the Med for the winter season. In a week there won\u2019t be much left in Juneau except closed shop fronts.<\/p>\n

Which reminds me, I need to get that last bit of shopping done before Del Sol closes for good.<\/p>\n

We have also done something quite incredible. Despite the fact that there has been a fair bit of internal strife onboard \u2013 mostly confined to my own department \u2013 we have managed to pull off two back-to-back cruises with perfect ratings. Meaning that two weeks in a row, every department has cleared the base rating line. Not only that, we\u2019ve cleared it by a lot. Once is difficult enough, twice is a serious accomplishment. Not to mention that the three weeks before that? We were so close to a perfect that it was almost laughable. Really, I think we missed by 0.1 in one section all three times.<\/p>\n

Every ship thinks they\u2019re the best, every ship thinks they\u2019re the top of the fleet. This time though, we have the numbers to back it up.<\/p>\n

And that my friends, is a pretty cool way to end the Groundhog Day season.<\/p>\n

Bright blessings<\/p>\n

Shaughnessy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

~ Some things are better left to chance, I could have missed the pain, but I\u2019d have had to miss the dance~ I always get retrospective near the end of a contract; probably everyone here has noticed that it\u2019s a … 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":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alaska","category-below-the-waterline"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-6U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428","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=428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}