The world cruise starts, my new roommate is a snoreasauras and sleeping in the video room!

I was really not prepared for the social side of ship life on my 2nd contract and with the easier life and more free time like most of the team I spent almost every night in the bar. The first few months of the contract had a great team and everyone got on great, the problem is that inevitably your friends leave and you don't get on as well with their replacements.

First Travis left and I didn't get on with his replacement as well, but still he was a massively talented videographer and he had great organsitation skills and had everything planned out for the world cruise including some great custom graphics for our lower thirds. It was just socially we were a bit distant and looking back I think that might have been intentional because its much harder to bollock your junior if you are friends!

Next half the photo team left at the start of the world cruise Amanda & Sam, then also my roommate Matt & his girlfriend Lena as well. Looking back I can see why the team was changed so much because a world cruise is reward in some ways and you want your best people on it, this meant we went from a fun loving relatively inexperienced team to a more experienced but less cohesive one.

My next roommate was...how do I put this politely...? A nightmare! He was a first contracter South African guy who had joined with his girlfriend who was also a first timer, which of course went completely againt the having a more experienced team rule! At some point they had obviously been told they would get their own cabin which was not the case and so he was not happy from day 1. I remember him telling me they had a 5 year plan to work onboard make as much money as possible and then start their own business back in SA, however this also meant they stayed to themselves a lot and didn't really make the effort to integrate themselves to the team.

With hindsight it was a solid plan and later me would have got on really well with him, however the Sun was a party ship and my roommate never left the cabin or socialised when he was not working. I remember getting back to the cabin one night for a quick break between shoots around 9pm and he was already in bed with all the cabin lights off!!! However he was kind enough to say 'don't worry about putting the lights or TV on as I can sleep through anything'...which he could. I'd seen the man sleep from when he finished his shift as early as 7pm right through till he was due at work the next day at 11a.m, that in itself was not the biggest problem, no my friends it was the snoring!!!

It was like an elephant being put through a woodchipper, a guttural angry mewling that was so loud even sitting in the cabin watching TV with headphones on you could not hear a word of the TV because he was so fucking loud! To test the loudness theory, I went to Brittany's cabin and with the door shut halfway down the corridor you could still hear him snoring, albeit not as brain crunchingly bad but still audible.

With my sleeping situation rapidly deteriorating this meant I would have to drink myself into a stupour most nights and then look at his roster and sleep during the day when I could while he was working, sometimes I would take a few pillows up to the video room and grab some yoga mats from the gym and create a makeshift bed. However this ended when my new boss caught me one night and banned me from sleeping in the video room under 'health and safety rules' when in actual fact it was purely because he wanted to bring girls there.

I'd find any reason not to be in my cabin and tried to grab sleep whenever I could and this led to me drinking more and also getting more short tempered with everyone else around me, at the time I was officially told to just 'suck it up and stop moaning' which is a great response! One night I had drunken that much that I accidentally walked straight into the wrong cabin and very impolitely asked a startled musician 'what the fuck are you doing in my cabin?' It was most definately not my cabin and my apologies to George!

Meanwhile the photo team is disintergrating around the seams as by this point one of the guys on the team had slept with 3 of the girls on the team, this then meant, Girl A could not work with Girl B or Girl C and vice versa, and with my new roommate and his partner not being the social types either the team unity that had been fantastic just a few short weeks earlier had evaporated completely over the course of the month.

I was thankful for my friendship with the dancers at the time as with the personal issues developing in the photo team and a realisation that I was drinking too much, I started to avoid the bar for a while and just hangout with them watching movies in the dressing room. Also I was kept busy shooting and editing their shows as a side job and making showreels for them, anything really to avoid the cabin of doom!

A few weeks later my friends in the cast left as well and within the space of around 6 weeks I'd gone from loving my 2nd contract and eagerly awaiting the world cruise to being completely miserable, lonely and completly on edge due to lack of sleep and too much alcohol.

I've found over the years that every ship has been a completely different experience dependent on so many different factors, how hands on is your photo mananger, do you get on with your senior videographer? how this your photo team - do they get on with each other and can they sell? How strict are ships rules? Where are you cruising, where are your guests from? All of the above and a million other small details can completely change how your contract goes.

Looking back halfway through my contract on the Sun was one of my top 3 most miserable times onboard ships and I had never gone from such a positive to a negative experience in such a short space of time.

Next time on the cruise diaries - Some of the amazing ports on the world cruise!