Dry dock

Since February 01,my ship is docked in so-called "dry dock".

In a technical jargon, "dry dock" is the time when ship is docked - without passengers - and all the water taken underneath so various work can be done properly,like painting, re-monting, carpets and furniture are changed, everything cleaned and basically people around the ship have hundreds things to do even though passengers are not around.

This is also time when more often than not, life is not comfortable since electricity, air condition and water are regularly switched off - thankfully this time everything was fine (more or less) since this is a new ship,built only in 2010 and going trough "dry dock" only because of insurance rules. My colleagues were all expecting some horrible survival but it turned out fine - I am working on cruise ships for more than eight years now,so of course for me this is nothing - in earlier times I had "dry dock" in both summer and winter and on both occasions lack of air condition/heating was nasty, however this time everything was fine - except usual side effect of having all the carpets covered with nylon: after walking on nylon,one always gets shock from static electricity when touching a door handle. So we walk around the ship and get electric shocks all the time!

I don't have a clue what other teams on the ship do - cleaners clean and housekeeping departments have full hands of things to do, my team used this time to do complete inventory starting from a scratch, we took lists and locked ourselves in different corners,started counting and checking every single item we have in shops, from pens, key chains and t-shirts to perfumes, handbags and jewelry. Everything. It is a kind of work one can't do with passengers around anyway, because passengers like nothing better than to disturb you in the middle of counting and to check what is it you have in that pile. So we counted and counted but it wasn't really difficult because days passed fast + working hours were far more pleasurable than what we usually do - compared with our regular 16-hours daily, this "dry dock" was relaxing experience. Best part of the day was dinner when we suddenly discovered red wine that was always there,but no one drank it earlier because we work,after all - so we started enjoying this long dinners with relaxed conversation and lots of red wine and it was true team-bonding.

Some of the guys in my team complained they don't know what to do with themselves in the evenings - its too cold to enjoy going outside, we even stayed several days in Venezia and nobody bothered to walk in a storm - I didn't have that problems because I enjoyed very much the unexpected pleasure of having a cabin for myself alone and relaxed, read, watched movies and slept a lot. Maybe its the lack of air or light,who knows, but the moment I return to my cabin after the dinner (and red wine) I am ready to sleep immediately - one evening I actually slept from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. next morning without a break. Obviously I needed it!

Also I used this time to watch TV show "True blood" which turned out to be far more interesting than I expected, I actually enjoyed it very much!