My Life on a Ship

Ship life is the most bizarre lifestyle I have ever experienced. Most of the time it feels like a combination between summer camp and a frat house. The rest of the time it feels a lot like a dungeon. Well, okay, that might be a bit extreme, but it can fluctuate lot between periods of hard, long work, and periods of freedom and good living in exotic locales.

My life on ships has been pretty tame compared to most other people’s. I had four good friends from home on my first ship when I got there, and I started dating Jack within a month of my ship debut. So I have been a bit sheltered from the harsher realities that shiplife sometimes entails for people, like extreme amounts of partying, quite a lot of promiscuity and a certain degree of loneliness. Because Jack is one of the highest ranking officers on the ship, I have also been a bit spoiled, with a bigger, nicer room (without any major plumbing problems), better food at times, and other perks. At first I felt a bit bad about these advantages, since none of my peers had them, but my first contract on the Summit, as well as a lot of debate with Jack, has led me to the opinion that no one else is going to take care of me and I would be crazy to pass up these opportunities.
(My room, pre-Jack, the Crew Bar, and hanging out with friends.)





















(Our room on the Summit (top) and the Century (below). Notice that we don't have a window on the Century, which is an older ship. Sniff.)

When the ship is at sea, I am working. If I am not working, I am sleeping. There is not a lot in between. On the Summit, which spent most of the winter cruising from Los Angeles to Hawaii, we had 8.5 seadays out of a 14 day cruise. This is very painful for most of the people working on the ship. It means long days and lots of hours. Our second ship, the Century, was the busiest ship in the Celebrity fleet. We spent pretty must the entire contract doing four and five day cruises out of Miami. They were, in a word, insane. I feel the need to put that word in bold, italics and to underline it too, if I could. Just so you know how serious I really am. Every four or five days, 2000 people would get off the ship, 2000 new people would get on, would have to be trained in emergency procedures (which means a boat drill before we sail), and would generally be demanding (when we were lucky) party-animals. When we were unlucky they were disgusting, offensive, criminal and cheap. They liked to play in the casino until the wee hours of the morning and still managed to be there waiting for us to open the tables the next day.
(Guest boat drill, and the girls chillin.)

Now, unlike on land, a casino dealer’s life on a ship involves much more than just dealing casino games. We are responsible for set up and closing, and for a table count that happens at the end of the night, where we empty all the money the tables have made, count it, and balance. Every ten days or so some of us have to participate in a slot count, where you empty the hundreds of slot machines in the casino and count all the money contained therein. Sometimes this can total an awful lot of money. To be honest, I find it all quite obscene. I haven’t seen the slot count hit the $1million mark, but I’ve seen it come pretty close. You also have to do a hideous boat drill with all the newly embarked guests before we leave the homeport, and a crew boat drill usually once a cruise to practice emergency procedures. When you sign on any ship you have to go through two weeks of training and orientation, even if you have signed on 2,438 Celebrity ships before that one. Even if you have signed on the same ship 2,438 times.








(Dealing in the casino on New Year's Eve, and the slot count. On this night we counted $668,000 after a five day cruise.)

With all that in mind, it is not so hard to understand why many people drink themselves senseless when they are not working, often even preferring drinking to sleeping. We have two crew bars onboard and a beer costs about a buck. Oh, my.

My life on the ship is a little different. I sleep a lot. I try to get exercise. I try to spend time with Jack, even though we have exact opposite and very busy schedules (I can’t count the number of times I have met him in the room as we are exchanging shifts in the bed… he is getting up and I am going to sleep or vice versa). If we are at sea, I am working during the day. On breaks I try to see Jack, we go to the Cova for coffee, or I read my book. At night time it is pretty much the same, except that usually all of us casino folk wander upstairs on our breaks to grab a bite of pizza, pasta or (not often enough) salad. The food is not bad (this is in a guest buffet), but it is repetitive after oh, six months or so. Sometimes I am able to stomach the mess food and sometimes I’m not, so that I spent about two weeks this contract eating French bread with butter and sliced ham sandwiched into it at every meal.


(Luckily I have a boyfriend who loves to eat too, and sometimes he gets a special dinner for a treat; Coffee in the Cova.)







To make up for the questionable eating situation on the ship, many people eat like madmen when they get into port. After a while though, even this isn’t fulfilling anymore, and all you want, if you’re me, is good ole chicken stew or shepherds pie or homemade bread, or something else my mom makes, and made in my mom’s kitchen, please. I am lucky because Jack gets a fruit bowl sent to our room and yogurt in our fridge, so at least we have a little fruit in our diet. We always eat the bananas and a lot of the grapes, not so much the apples. I don’t think we’ve ever eaten one. We also buy Nature Valley granola bars, rice cakes and raisins to supplement our diet. Life is good.

Once in a while, something really fantastic happens on the ship, like your sister comes to visit. This is one of the most exciting things that ever happened to me in my time on ships. I hope that many more visits like this one are still to come; it was wonderful in every way (Except that she had to leave. On the last night we started plotting how she could stay longer, but it was a bit too late. I still wish we had kept her on for one more cruise though).










On a more novel note, the ships are quite beautiful and it is a neat place to spend some time. The ships, especially the Summit, are also quite BIG. Sometimes they seem to overwhelm the small Caribbean towns we are docked in. Sometimes the sea is calm and in every direction as far as you can stretch your vision, there is only more sea. Sometimes the sea is rough and everyone staggers around like drunks. Sometimes you cruise past islands like Cuba or meet another ship in the middle of the lonesome Pacific ocean. Often, the sunsets are spectacular. Sometimes there are emergency medical evacuations at sea and sometimes, every thing is just nice and quiet and uneventful. I have been working on ships for a year and four months and have visited a bunch of ports on the U.S. mainland, Hawaii, Alaska, Victoria and Vancouver, B.C., many Mexican ports, Costa Rica, St. Thomas, St. Marteen, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Grand Cayman, Jamaica, been through the Panama canal a few times, crossed the Atlantic from Europe, and been to Italy and Spain (and more Europe to come in the spring!). I have met and fallen in love with a wonderful man, who I have a lot of fun with, and who takes incredible care of me. I have made friends with and met people from all over the world. So I guess that in spite of the sometimes hardships, I have a lot to be thankful for. And I am!!!
(If you want to see any photo in a larger size, just click on it.)