Cruise Ship Diaries Part 13

Crew turnover in the cruise industry is massive and as much as head office would like to have the same team in place for a whole season, rotations made that nigh on impossible. Halfway through my first contract I was about to work with my third different photo manager in a matter of months, I was also about to get my third roomate of the contract as Morne was about to be transhipped.

Morne was fairly pissed off at the time as he had just got settled onboard the Coral and had only come back to the company at the time because he was offered an assistant managers role, he had no assurances that he would have that role on the ship he was going to. That said, we stayed in touch over the years and ironically it was probably the best deicsion of his life and he ended up meeting his future wife onboard!

Raf had been a long term assistant manager for Princess and was sent to the Coral as acting manager when our previous manager left suddenly, Raf had already been midway through a contract somewhere else and while onboard he'd impressed the office enough that they confirmed his status as manager offically.

I can't think of anyone on the team who would have a bad word to say about Raf and he came up to the deck 9 photog corridor to celebrate with us when he got his promotion confirmation.

Raf's replacement was Kat from Canada an expereinced manager who once again you'd be hard pressed to find anyone to say a bad word about her, to get Raf or Kat mad you really had to fuck up.

With Morne moving on Liam from London moved into my cabin, and being English and unfortuntaely a West Ham supporter meant lots of banter and many games of Fifa on the playstation. Liam was also on his first contract and joined about a month after me, so barring any sudden firings we'd be roomates till the end of my contract.

On most peoples first contracts the crew bar is the social life line and daily soap opera, you have to be there every night to see the next episode. It was common for the bar to only really get going each night around 11.30pm / midnight, this led to people stocking up on their drinks so you could be at least 10 drinks deep on the table.

As the nights in the bar would wear on however was left / left standing would usually migrate towards the middle tables which would get pushed together. Although the many different nationalities onboard co-existed and there was rarely any trouble the bars breakdown was usually by deparment, meaning by the end of night the main tables would usually be a mix of cast (singers / dancers), production crew,musicians, cruise staff, shoppies, spa, pursers and photogs.

If memory serves me right the crew club president at the time was Dallas, a canadian guy who was the dance captain and its from him I learned and was inducted into Buffalo Club. It is an old drinking game that if legend can be believed goes back to the old west and meant that a gunslinger would also use there non-dominant hand to drink as there life depended on their main hand being free to shoot from.

So the rule was that if you were right handed you had to drink with your right hand and vice versa if you were left handed, but just to complicate matters a ship addendum to the rules was that you had to switch to your regular hand for only 30 minutes before the bar closed, and with the bar having different closing times it could prove extremely hazardous.

Most people dress up as a pirate once a year at most usually for Halloween...

On ships dressing up as a pirate, getting drunk and harrasing people (guests and other crew) is actually part of the job! The photogs have to dress up for gangway shoots which means usually rolling in from the bar still drunk and putting a little bit of charcoal on their faces. Then they have to shout 'argh' and accost the guests to stop for a picture with them as they walk off the ship.

The guests would usually happily pose for a picture as we'd threaten then with swords, however on ocassion they following could happen

- they would completely ignore you

- no thank we don't want a picture

- they'd pose for the picture and grope the pirates - male or female!

- they'd get angry and swear at you

- worst case sceanrio - they'd actually shove you out of the way and swear at you!

Thankfully as a videog I never had to suffer an early morning dockside, sweating my balls off while still drunk and being abused by passengers, however we would get roped into ressie shoots.

I don't know thought of restaurant shoots (ressie) but they need murdering as it is one of the photogs most hated events to shoot. You have to go table to table and make people stop eating to pose for a photo if they can put down their knive and fork for a second!

From time to time the manager Raf would ask if we wanted to help out by being pirates and to convince us he would buy a round of drinks for everyone being a pirate that night! This woiuld entail lots of shots and amounted to our manager making us drinks copious amounts to harrass the guests.

Two pirate stories standout from my time on the Coral, first of all one night my roommate Liam was doing one of his first pirate nights. He hadn't been a great pirate at the first dinner earlier in the evening, over a few shots in the bar beteen we went back for the late diners Raf tried to motivate him 'you just need to be louder and scarier Liam'. Liam took this advice onboard and absolutely yelled at the first lady walking out of the restaurant who looked like she might keel over with shock any moment, she didn't thankfully but we didn't see she was trailing an oxygen tank behind her.

Strike one for the photogs!

Another night myself, Raj & Morne (a bad idea already) were doing pirates together and we'd been loud and enthusiastic for the first sitting, we were also about 5 or 6 drinks in before we went back for the 2nd sitting and had been warned to tone it down by the Maitre'd of the restaurant we were 'pirating' outside. Strike 2

Of course Raj was to blame because it was Raj, he had a toy monkey he'd hold that had a name badge on it saying 'Spank' so he could yell at old ladies 'do you want to spank my monkey'...waits for shocked reaction 'thats the monkeys name' he'd reply. He also had a toy parrot on his shoulder called 'Pecker' which led to 'do you want to touch my pecker?', surprisingly many old ladies did!

We were waiting for the quick eaters to start filing out so to keep ourselves entertained we were playing keep ups (football) with the Pecker the Parrot, Raj rather enthusiastly punted Pecker a little bit too hard and the toy parrot actually flew right into the restaurant and right onto a guests plate!

Raj yelled 'Goal' and ran around with his hands celebrating before running into the restaurant which was definitely not allowed, without missing a beat he did a forward roll on the floor sprang up like a jack in the box at the table Pecker had invaded and Raj promptly stabbed Pecker with his sword.

'Don't worry, I got him', Raj proudly announced to the restaurant as he held aloft the vanquished parrot, and would you believe it people clapped as Raj took a bow. We were stood outside shaking our heads thinking how the fuck did he get away with that? Well he didn't, although nothing more was said on the night the matire'd of the restaurant was apoplectic afterwards and he had complained to the first purser / CSD (customer services director) about the 'incident'.

After #cakegate a few months earlier the photo department was still on shaky ground with the onboard bosses, we were barred from shooting Pirates from that day onwards until the new manager Kat came onboard and with her years of experience knew the right thing and people to talk too to let us get back to our pirating ways!

On the next cruise diaries - Costa Rica, Rainforests, Bananas and Volcanos!