A Pattern in the Static

Voyage #2 - November 21st through December 1st

I blame it on Air Force One. Not the plane, the movie about the plane; with Harrison Ford, who plays a perfect president – saving his family, the world, and the ideals of democracy from Russian terrorists, all from the cargo hold of an airplane. Ever since lying in my cabin one afternoon and watching this ridiculous spectacle of a movie I have been, from deep down in my belly to the radiant smile on my face, happy. Well, the kitsch-coffee mug I purchased in Ushuaia on Turnover Day also could have sparked the brightening of my mood. I love kitschy coffee mugs almost as much as I love the coffee that goes in them. Or, perhaps it was Turnover Day itself. Turnover Day is like a holiday: Every ten days, the ship says good bye to one group of passengers and prepares to greet another, and I get a full four hour break wherein I can go into Ushuaia – walk the streets, the sidewalks, visit the internet cafe, the gigantic grocery store, and pass droves of people who don’t know who I am and want nothing from me! It’s just fantastic. But Air Force One must have played a role as well. I mean, come on: The First Lady wields a semi-automatic rifle at the end. How awesome is that?

So, I’m happy. Our ice machine is fixed, the manual labour has dramatically decreased, I have, as previously mentioned, my own little coffee mug to lug around. I strum my guitar in the afternoon. I am eating well. I have a little chocolate every day. I’ve discovered the joys of tea and honey. I’m writing prolifically. My Ipod still has the ability to surprise me, and I get to play DJ every night in my bar. I seem to have nestled myself into that mythical Good Place.

In other words, I’m getting used to the new routine of life down here. Day in and day out are essentially the same. I get up, I work, I take a few hours to myself, I work some more, then I sleep. Sometimes I get off the ship for a bit. The only things that really change are the scenery outside and, every ten days, the guests I serve. In consequence I’ve begun in the past weeks to notice some over-arching patterns in the fabric of day-to-day life, a few quirks specific to my world at sea that I think are worth sharing:

First, I can guarantee that somebody will projectile vomit in a public area on our first sea day. This cruise somebody threw up down a staircase, another guest barfed in the middle of dinner in the dining room, and I watched a cute Chinese woman in a wonderful Scottish Terrier emblazoned hand-knit sweater barf into a vomit bag while sitting in my bar. Last cruise, the little bathroom behind my bar smelled for days after a cruiser vomited indiscriminately into the room. Not a spot was missed. The phenomenon of seasickness is remarkable – a good ninety percent of passengers are always affected. These passengers come on board, get handfuls of medication from the ship’s doctor, cross their fingers in hope of not falling ill, venture out of their cabin on the first sea day in a cloud of naïve optimism, and proceed to barf somewhere inappropriate. The ship then becomes a ghost town for the two days it takes to cross the Drake Passage, and finally, as we reach calmer waters, these medicated passengers drowsily rub their eyes and take in the scenery, as if coming out of hibernation.

Which brings me to the next fact of life I can rely on: The intercom announcement of the first iceberg sighting will clear out my bar with an incredible efficiency. Eyes light up, ears perk, and everyone scatters with their cameras. I observe the frenzy, bemused, as a room full of middle aged men and women abandon their half-finished mugs of hot cocoa and glasses of red wine, joyfully running off with their cameras, the word “Iceberg!” making its way through the group like a game of telephone.

About the passengers themselves, I find that the quality of my relationship with them on any given cruise will resemble a bell-curve. There will be a small group that I adore, two or three that I really, really (insert euphemism here), and the vast majority in the middle I will barely interact with at all - the cruisers that don’t drink, of course. It’s always a shame to see the ones I grow fond of leave the ship. Last cruise I met a great retired Canadian couple that had sailed on their own boat from Victoria, BC to Ecuador, left their boat in Ecuador, traveled down to Ushuaia, and caught the Lyubov Orlova for passage to Antarctica. After cruising with us, their plan was to make their way back up South America, reunite with their boat and continue to sail. A lovely life – no wonder they were such a charming couple. This cruise we have a small group of fantastic young Americans, one of which told me that this boat is filled with the nicest people he has ever met in his life. Awww! I won’t speak of the passengers that make up the latter group. They come, they irritate, and they go. ‘Tis life in customer service, wherever one is.

A reality concerning the relationship between the Lyubov Orlova and myself is that working aboard her will lead to injury from time to time. This is no surprise, considering the fact that my world is always swaying, sometimes violently, and that an unavoidable aspect of my job is to crawl around incredibly awkward spaces in the ship’s hold, complete with unforgiving steel girders, protruding nails and metal bits that I don’t always see. Speaking of steel girders, as I type this I can still feel the nasty bump on the head that I gave myself today while turning around to pass a case of Coke to one of the dining room servers. Last week I managed to stab myself with a screwdriver while chipping iceberg ice. These wounds serve as a constant personal reminder to be careful for God’s sake! I’m not working in a bouncy castle, although it feels like it sometimes.

I can’t say that I mind this particular idiosyncrasy of life at sea: The Lyubov Orlova has the distinction of being the only place where my dreams have such vividness and whimsy that I will actually wake myself up with laughter on a regular basis. Not that the dreams themselves are particularly funny – I usually am puzzled later in the day by what I found so hilarious at four in the morning, but that’s okay. It’s good to know that I’m having lots of fun in REM.

And the Russian crew, God love ‘em: They constantly screw up in the most hilarious of ways. Most recently, an officer on the bridge woke up the entire passenger side of the ship with a reprimand over the intercom that was meant for the engine room. It was a full two minutes before he realized he was scolding passengers, not sailors. During the last cruise, the second mate, a stinky bear of a man, scared the hell out of customers who were drinking in my bar after I’d closed by sitting down with them with his own bottle of vodka and attempting to join their party. While setting up the ship in Ushuaia, our carpenter was repairing the door to my fridge, and a screw was giving him trouble. Rather than taking out the screw and re-screwing it correctly, he decided to force it in wonky and sideways, right into the metal rather than the hole for which it was intended. Watching what he was doing, I started laughing. He looked at me and started laughing too! We laughed together; it’s the Russian way.

I find that living and working on a ship it’s easy to settle into a pattern wherein a number of days will go by where I will forget to leave the vessel – sometimes I won’t even bother to go on deck. Then I will start wondering why I’ve become so grumpy, not realizing that a lack of activity and fresh air has started to transform me into Quasimodo. From time to time I need the reminder to go on land, because my routine is so cyclical that I tend to get stuck in it. I just need a few hours every couple days to romp around in the snow, ride in the zodiac, hang out with wild animals…oh my. As I type this, I realize how much it sounds as if I’ve become somebody’s terrier.

Most importantly though, I can count on being surprised from time to time by something unexpectedly beautiful. I saw my first seal on this trip, an adorable, fat seadog with a cat face, laying prostrate, lolling around from side to side, every once in awhile lifting his head up to check out the crowd of curious bystanders, letting out a grunting honk, and lying back down, as if the act of merely lifting his head and looking about him used more energy than he was willing to expend. He was fantastically nonchalant, but I was enamored.

And the penguins, they are following their own patterns. It is springtime, and they have built themselves nests of rocks whereupon each mound rests one fat, jealous penguin, guarding one fat penguin egg. Next time we come down to the peninsula, the eggs will be ready to hatch, and it will be very soon when fuzzy little baby penguins are running around. And with that, life will go on: Cruisers will continue to vomit in the most unfortunate of places and be filled with awe at their first iceberg sighting, Lyubov Orlova, the cruel mistress that she is, will continue to injure me, the Russian crew will continue to foible, and I will continue to wake up laughing in the middle of the night.

Thus, my brand of ordinary will roll on.