No Sleep Till LA:My first cruise on the Sapphire - Part 2:Days off at Joes Oyster bar, Eastern European exploitation and selling 9 DVD's!

As I mentioned in the last chapter we crammed an absolute ton of tours and events into a week cruise on the Sapphire and around the midway point I had my first tour in Cabo which was a glass blowing factory and tour of the coast, looking back the camera work isn't too bad but I wish I'd had time to get some commentary on how the process worked. For the 2nd part of the tour we visited a church and some beaches to get some scenic shots and there was a lot cactuses! I'm fairly happy with the above video and it holds up fairly well for being 11 years old, I've got some good close ups of the local fauna but I hate the music!

As I was trying to make a good impression I even suggested filming more events because as I'd seen anything pool based seemed to get a big crowd and we had an event I'd never covered before which was Crew vs PAX pool volleyball. I shot and edited it much like pool games, I just wish we could have done more with it like putting the scores on screen as a graphics and have pre/post game interviews with the teams but like every ship event you film on the fly and do the best you can.

Above you can see one of the highights of the cruise which was the amazing Paplanta Flyers from Mazatlan which Rich had made into a 10 minute generic which meant I acutally had a day off in port for the first time which meant going to Joes Oyster bar

As I soon learned Joes was something of a crew institution and they had special deals on bulk booze for crew if you showed your ID card. I only got to go once or twice but it was essentially the crew bar ashore where we all got to blow off some late cruise steam, also there were very few PAX which was always a bonus as you could never really relax when they were around.

It was still my first cruise so a day off at a crew bar ashore was a great way to meet lots of new faces from entertainemnt and the spa, also we got to discover the pure horror of Mexican port taxi drivers. I say taxi but these were more souped up buggys with absolutely no thought of health and safety.

The drivers would then proceed to race each other back to the port from the bar while all the shit faced crew shouted their encouragement beers in hand! One of the girls asked the driver what his name was and he shouted back 'El Diablo'!!! just another Thursday in Mexico!

After a mid afternoon nap it was then time to drink even more and pre-game for the Mexican Fiesta Deck Party, like the sailaway party this was held on the back of the ship in a smaller space than usual but because of that it made the event look packed to the rafters. To actively engage the PAX and just get the adrenaline going to get through the event you need a few drinks before hand!

Through the booze haze I can just about remember being pretty worn out after that day with the day off in port probably messing me up more than the late shoot and edit that evening, I usually edit straight after an event if its has been good so I probably finished around 3a.m that night.

We had two sea days left which meant the next day was the last formal night and we'd have the late night Champagne Waterfall party in the atrium to film.

Looking back there are a few horrific things about the above video, firstly what the hell was I thinking with the shitty waterdrop transitions between people pouring? They looked shit then and they really look shit now. The 2nd and easily most henious thing was that the restaurant staff were 'encouraged' (read 'forced') to come out and dance on the atrium staircase and with the passengers but still in their work uniforms. This led to way too many overly enthusiastic fillipinos kicking it on the dance floor, while you could see the boredom and contempy in all the eastern european girls eyes while they were being forced to do this. It was like the shittiest strip club of all time and I thought it was pretty bad at the time and the years make this type of event look even worse.

As always it was a quick edit and Rich had been prepping the menu's and getting the DVD build ready so that once I had edited the North Korean Leadership Party we'd be ready to master and burn the final DVD. Rich went to the bar and told me to give him a shout once i was done, once I was ready I expected another 2-3 hours of burning and boxing DVD's.

I asked Rich how many we had sold and he said 9, Yes, all that work I'd put in throughout the cruise and we'd pre-sold 9 DVD's! Apparently that was an improvement on the cruise where Rich had been by himself as they'd only sold 8. As much fun as my first cruise had been I'd quickly learned that Mexico was indeed the death run for videogs!

On the next cruise diaries - More stories from Spring Break on the Sapphire inclduing the burrito challenge, more tequila and Chileno Bay snorkelling!