{"id":791,"date":"2012-01-10T00:07:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-10T04:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=791"},"modified":"2013-06-17T18:37:55","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T18:37:55","slug":"off-to-see-the-world-fort-lauderdale-01062012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=791","title":{"rendered":"Off To See The World \u2013 Fort Lauderdale \u2013 [01\/06\/2012]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Giving deference to their preferences is our chief art
\nWe play our part in a perfectly working machine
\nYou must ever be aware
\nThis is a privilege great and rare
\nA special burden that we bear in our respective lives<\/em><\/p>\n

Putting the tropical ports and warm waters of Mexico and the Caribbean to our stern, and entering the promise of a bright new year, we literally have the World before us. Glittering and full of promise…and also slightly threatening, like a thunderstorm is beautiful, but only if you know how to harness its power.<\/p>\n

At long long <\/em>last\u2026welcome to the Grand World Voyage 2012.<\/p>\n

I have fought so very hard for this contract that now that it\u2019s starting it feels almost surreal. There have been a lot of people that have been quite worried about me, myself included at times (there have been more than a few panicked email that have winged their way out to various Family members over the last month, you know who you are and thank you so much for your ongoing and never-ending support.)<\/p>\n

You can feel the energy pulsing through the ship, pure, unadulterated, excitement. For some this is their first World Cruise, and they\u2019re looking around them in awe, unable to believe that they\u2019re really here. Some however, are old friends, who come up to me in the hallways and exclaim how glad they are to see I\u2019ve come back, who greet us with hugs and air-kisses and smiles. At dinner, we will hand each of them one single long-stemmed red rose…<\/p>\n

Welcome Home<\/em><\/p>\n

Because more than ever, this now becomes home. The World Cruise team is a family, slightly dysfunctional and not always harmonious but family none-the-less.<\/p>\n

Underneath all that of course, the cruise is a lot of work. Remember what I said about the swan? Before I left work last night, I spent an extra hour going around with a ruler and setting every single book straight, I cleared every surface, rechecked every return. And this morning I came in and did it all again, because an entire drop-box full of books (read: about 100) came back over night and had been left haphazardly all around my desk. I pulled all the travel guides that relate to the entire 112 day itinerary and stowed them safely in the back room, had my medical exam completed and scrubbed and uploaded 1100 new names to the check-in database.<\/p>\n

And then of course, the day really started.<\/p>\n

Embarkation day morning of the GWV is a little bit unlike any other that you\u2019ll ever work your way through. Everything has to be that little bit extra, that little bit more.\u00a0 My normal prep-time in the morning on a standard contract is approximately twenty minutes: pin back my hair, dab on a bit of lipstick, a tiny bit of mascara and I\u2019m good to go. My prep time for this morning? An hour. Hair curled and set back, full make-up, new nylons, pressed uniform (new<\/em> uniform actually, fresh out of the plastic), earrings, nail polish, and yes \u2013 for those of you who are mentally adding it \u2013 hematite. This day of all days, I don\u2019t go without my walls.<\/p>\n

One hour into opening time and the library is already busy, but these people know the score, they know the drill, you don\u2019t have to teach them anything \u2013 in fact, they could probably teach you. I\u2019ll spend three quarters of my day reshelving so that everything still looks perfect when corporate comes through.<\/p>\n

And then, at about 4:30 this afternoon, there will be three blasts from the ship\u2019s whistle \u2013 the modern day equivalent of \u201cthree heavy hearted cheers\u201d and we\u2019ll be off…<\/p>\n

For those of you who will be continuing to follow my drifting life through these pages until such time as I finally<\/em> alight on land again, the first part<\/em> of the itinerary is as follows:<\/p>\n

Day 1 \u2013 Fort Lauderdale
\nDay 2 \u2013 At Sea
\nDay 3 \u2013 At Sea
\nDay 4 \u2013 Dominica
\nDay 5 \u2013 Barbados
\nDay 6\/7 \u2013 At Sea
\nDay 8 \u2013 Belem, Brazil
\nDay 9 \/10 \u2013 At Sea
\nDay 11 \u2013 Recife Brazil<\/p>\n

Please don\u2019t kill me, the job might just succeed in doing it for you by April J<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Giving deference to their preferences is our chief art We play our part in a perfectly working machine You must ever be aware This is a privilege great and rare A special burden that we bear in our respective lives … 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":[40,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-world-voyage-2012","category-ports-of-call"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-cL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791","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=791"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2204,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions\/2204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}