Cruise

Long Beach

Saturday

Embarkation on MS Volendam

I drove the 30km from Manhattan Beach to Long Beach and arrived at the Cruise Terminal at about 10.30am. I dropped off my bags and then headed off to find the Hertz office in Long Beach to return the car. Hopefully I would next see my bags when they were delivered to my cabin on the ship.

The guy at the Hertz office looked like Will Smith and was so softly spoken it was somewhat hard to understand him; he kept chuckling to himself like he was having the best day of his life, maybe he was. He accepted the car, in which I had driven about 4300km without incident; except for last Thursday afternoon just east of Bakersfield when I was travelling in the left (fast) lane and a car came up very quickly behind me; I did the right thing and started to move to the slow lane; the driver of the other car had already decided that he’d be better off passing me on the inside so we both moved into the slow land at the same time; and had a very near miss, which didn’t seem to worry the other driver at all as he sped off into the distance.

I had considered walking the 3km back to the cruise terminal but as there was a vacant taxi right outside Hertz I took that and was waiting with all the other passengers by 11.15am.

We waited until 12 for something to happen; I sat waiting in the shade; about 100 people waited in a tight group right at the door as though cabins were going to be allocated on a first come first served basis.

We then had our passports and documentation examined (but not by anyone from the US government, perhaps because our first stop is Hawaii) and then got into another line to be photographed and given a room key; I was on the ship by 12.15pm and in my cabin by 12.20pm; welcoming my luggage by 12.30pm and then in the queue for lunch a few minutes after that.

It was all a bit anticlimactic; I’d expected long lines and missing bags and to find my cabin already occupied by a family of gypsies, but it all went very smoothly; as Holland America has 15 ships they should have had plenty of practice at doing this by now.

I unpacked everything into drawers and wardrobes and concealed the luggage under the bed; I’m here for three weeks. The steward for my cabin came and introduced himself and I got our friendship off to hopefully a good start by handing him some notes bearing the likenesses of American presidents; I think it is better to tip in advance in this sort of situation; three weeks is a long time for him to provide service above and beyond what is expected without some certainty of reward.

Lunch was served at the buffet on the Lido deck (which is deck 8) and I’m on deck 6; so only a couple of flights of stairs. For the first couple of days at sea the staff serves you at the buffet and shaking hands with all your new friends is discouraged to limit the spread of any nasty bugs that may have come aboard with the passengers. There are disinfectant dispensers all over the ship; especially at the entrance to eating areas and the passengers entering these areas are all doing a passable impression of Uriah Heep as they rub their hands together and walk towards the food with an expectant look on their faces.

The passengers were all eating like it had just been announced that no more food would be served until we got to Sydney in 21 days. The price of the tickets for this voyage means that the passengers are members of a class that should not have recently known hunger or deprivation; but they were attacking the buffet, as far as restrictions permitted, like a starving mob.

Food is available almost continuously from 6.30am (continental breakfast) followed at 7am by full buffet breakfast until 11am; or an a la carte breakfast from 8am to 9.30am. Buffet lunch from 11.30am to 2pm (a la carte from 12 to 2pm); burgers and pizzas available from 11.30 to 5pm; buffet dinner from 5.30pm to 9pm; a la carte 5 course dinner from 5.30pm to 9.30pm. Then a short break until late snacks from 10.30pm to 11.30pm; I haven’t been to this yet but the menu looks like another full buffet dinner. For those left a bit peckish between all of the above there is 24 hour room service available in your cabin at no charge.

The passengers are generally, to put it kindly, of an older (verging on ancient) demographic. I would be 20 years younger than any except ten of the other passengers and this includes three children under five. At least I won’t have any problem pushing my way into a lifeboat if we do a Titanic.

At 4.15pm there was life boat drill (and these are taken very seriously since the Costa Concordia fiasco) and if we have to abandon ship then I confidently predict that half of those allocated along with me to boat number 10 won’t even make it to the boat and the half that do, apart from me and the crew, won’t live to see dry land again.

The crew member in charge of boat 10 took great delight in using a loud hailer even though we were standing a couple of meters in front of him.  He even used it to talk to the other crew member who was marking off names and who was standing beside him; and who I could see was growing increasingly upset at being deafened every time he turned the loud hailer towards her. Can’t see them both lasting the distance if we have to go over the side.

Mr Loud Hailer had the list of names and was calling them out and as so often happens the person least suited to a task is the one who gets to perform it. It is not his fault that English isn’t his first language but he went through the whole list of names without one person answering ‘present’; it wasn’t that they weren’t present, just that they hadn’t heard a reasonably recognisable version of their name called out. I’d already had my name ticked off before Mr Loud Hailer arrived and got revved up. So as he went through the names for a second time people were answering to anything that sounded anything like their name; which meant that after the second calling of the names there were some cabins where half a dozen people had answered and still a lot that no one had answered for. The obvious solution was to crank up the volume on the loud hailer for the third calling and then an unspoken but collective decision was made by the passengers that if we didn’t get all these names checked off that we’d be there until it got dark. So people just answered to any name and before long we were all present and correct; or at least that is what Mr Loud Hailer reported to the officer who came to take the tally.

The Volendam was berthed next to the Queen Mary; the former Cunard transatlantic liner that is now a floating hotel and tourist attraction at Long Beach. I’d always thought that the Queen Mary and the (original) Queen Elizabeth were very large ships but the Queen Mary looked smaller than the ship I was standing on.

The 5pm departure was delayed for 40 minutes as fuel was still being pumped aboard. When we did start moving it was without fanfare or announcement. Only a blast of the ship’s horn to warn a sailing boat of our approach gave people the idea that the voyage had commenced.

Sunday

At Sea

Having suffered from seasickness on my last ocean adventure I took the precaution of taking some medication as we sailed westwards from Long Beach. The pills, potions, lotions, armbands and patches for alleviating seasickness all make the point that they can’t cure it (only sitting under a tree can do that) but they can prevent it. So you take or use whatever you have before the water gets rough. What I took certainly worked as I slept for 18 out of the next 24 hours; and while the sea was not as rough as crossing to or from Antarctica a crosswind and a swell from the starboard did induce some pitching and rolling through Saturday and Sunday nights.

So I mostly missed whatever antics happened on our first day at sea; what I did see was lots of old people walking around looking lost; including the good humored fellow along my corridor who said to no one in particular “I can’t find my cabin; Christ! I’m on the wrong deck”; he gave a loud guffaw and walked off to the stairs.

Monday

At Sea

We were instructed to put our clocks back one hour last night as we had gained an hour as we sailed westward. It seems that a third of the passengers (including your correspondent) did this; a third left their clocks untouched and a third put their clocks forward one hour; all of which led to much confusion among the passengers this morning as some turned up an hour early for breakfast and some turned up an hour late; this should not really matter as the meals are all available for hours. But it seemed to matter to all and sundry and they felt compelled to tell everyone they could get within earshot how confusing changing the clocks was going to be and couldn’t we just stay on the same time until we get to Sydney

I’m sure I heard one old bat say to her friend that she would sort it out by putting her clock back two hours tonight.

The sea beneath the ship is now over 4000m deep and it is a deep cobalt, maybe Prussian Blue, blue; like the colour of bottles of Quik Ink that I used to use to fill up fountain pens in days of old (younger readers will have to ignore that last simile as I can think of no other comparison).

The ship has started to roll again; shortly after dawn it stopped rolling (side to side motion) and was only pitching slightly (front to back motion). I’m sitting at the desk in my cabin (6194) and the door to my balcony is open and until a few moments all I could hear was the wind and the waves; now I can also hear, but can’t see, the couple in the next cabin on their balcony discussing what time it would now be in Australia; almost anytime at all according to them as they can’t decide on how the world time zones operate. I’m tempted to intervene but will resist.

The only sensible thing I’ve yet heard a passenger say in the last two days was this morning when a man was explaining, in detail, to his wife how waves are formed by the action of wind across the surface of the sea. What he was saying was perfectly true but she looked at him like he was speaking Turkish

This morning at 11am I thought I would join in with one of the many daily activities and went to a cooking demonstration; the dish being demonstrated was lobster macaroni. Sitting in the front row was a tiresome American woman who incessantly asked question off point and after 15 minutes I felt that I two choices; (a) leave my seat and go and slap her very hard and tell her to shut up; or (b) leave the room (I will leave the reader to decide which choice I made).

Sometimes activities turn out to be something different than you imagine; Travel Journals at 10am seemed like a good chance to pick up some tips for what I’m writing for you. It turned out to be a roomful of old ducks sticking photographs in books (and they weren’t even their own photographs!). The digital photography tips session at 11am was a roomful of people to whom electricity is probably a constant wonder being talked at by someone described as Techspert Jason (Techspert wasn’t the first word that came to my mind when I saw him, but I have some sympathy for the poor bugger as he must need the patience of a saint to try to teach this lot how to use a computer or a digital camera, it would be like trying to teach a pig to knit). The audience members were all holding their digital cameras as though they might explode if the wrong button was even brushed by a careless finger.

At 5pm there is the LGBT Gathering in the Crow’s Nest Bar on the port side (this is the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender get together). Might be worth going to just so I can add some more categories for the passengers; so far all I’ve got is Old and Really Old.

As we boarded the ship the other day we were all photographed twice; once for the official records and then again by the ship’s photographers who operate under the exotic name of JC Black Label Photography. This morning I went to view my photograph. We, the passengers, had been photographed against a plain background and I expected that this would have been substituted for some nautical scene; but no, there we all were in our individual photos, standing against the dreariest background imaginable. It looked like were embarking on a prison ship. This discovery was only enlivened by me hearing an old dear saying to her husband “How will we know which is our photograph?”

Tuesday

At Sea

Up at sunrise (6am) for a walk around deck 3 where 3.5 times around equals 1 mile. For some reason, or no reason, the agreed direction of travel for walkers is anti-clockwise. This is the time when this deck gets a good hosing down and a scrub by the crew (not the whole crew, just a few of them). I’ll have to go earlier or later as it tedious squelching through the water pooled on the deck (oh, the crushing problems of being on a cruise).

It’s cloudy today, though noticeably warmer out on deck.

At breakfast an elderly American announced to everyone “Another two days of this before we get to Hawaii; we’ll all be mad by then!”  I wasn’t sure what “this” he was referring to; the constantly surrounded by water view; the enormous breakfasts or just being on a boat; who knows, and I wasn’t about the ask him.

I’m beginning to suspect that entertainment/education sessions are being deliberately misdescribed in the daily program just to lure an unsuspecting audience to attend; eg at 2pm there was a session The Art of the Hawaiian Shirt; this turned out to be origami instruction on how to make the flowers that are commonly featured on Hawaiian shirts.

After lunch I was sitting by the pool (in the shade) when the resident musical group set up to play (Elise and the HALcats; this name is an attempt at humour because the shipping line is the Holland America Line (HAL)) but they had to wait 10 minutes for the guitarist to turn up; how can you be late on a ship? Him and that origami woman won’t be getting seats in my lifeboat if things go awry.

So far I haven’t had a meal in the main dining room; I’ve been eating at the Lido buffet, it’s in and out without all the fuss of waiter service.

The amount of food served up at each meal is astonishing and the waste must be equally astonishing. I’ve been watching for recycling of food; eg the Swedish meatballs come back as Bolognaise sauce (although that would be a hard one to detect). Maybe the crew eats for dinner what the passengers don’t eat for lunch and so on. Breakfasts seem to be the same fifty things every morning; lunch seems to be about 10 different things surrounded by the same salads and vegetables. Although the desserts do change for lunch and dinner and in 3 days I’ve counted 19 flavours of ice cream, sorbets and gelato (available in bowl or cone). They can’t possibly keep this variety going for three weeks. Eventually menus will be recycled and the old bats will be complaining; I don’t see why because most of the passengers would eat a keyboard if you put some gravy on it.

Also on today for our viewing pleasure was an art auction; with the words ‘art’ and ‘auction’ both used in the widest possible sense. At the risk of defaming those involved this seems like a bit of a scam; the works on offer are from the ‘horses running through moonlit surf’ and “sparkly Elvis on black velvet” schools of art. Prospective purchasers were lured with a personalised invitation slid under the cabin door (my invitation got my name wrong) and the offer of a glass of ‘champagne’ for those attending. I happened to wander past as it was in progress and a very oily auctioneer was talking high grade crap about the next work to be auctioned; it looked to me like the scribble that proud mothers have on their desks at work to show what their child has done at pre-school.

Some years ago I read a non-fiction book called A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace. I only thought about it when I first had a look around my cabin and saw the instructions for using the toilet. It is a vacuum toilet and therefore you should not under any circumstances be sitting on it when you press the flush button. The designers have gone some way to avoid this problem was positioning the flush button where only a seated contortionist could reach it, but I’m sure that this button placement is only the result of years of unhappy experiences by passengers who wouldn’t do as they were told.

The piece that gives the book its name involves the author going on a seven night cruise around the Caribbean. The Cruise Director on that cruise, Bob, told a story about his wife using the toilet and by not following similar instruction becoming stuck on the toilet. Bob called for assistance and to protect his wife’s modesty he gave her a Mexican sombrero to hold in front of her when the plumber arrived. The plumber duly arrived and assured both of them that he would soon have the wife freed; but he added “that Mexican underneath your wife will take a little bit longer”.

I can see some rain in the distance and the sea is not as lake calm as it has been since yesterday.

Wednesday

At Sea

Up to see the sunrise at 6.30am; actually I was awake at 5.30am; but sunrise is about the earliest that you can start wandering around the ship without looking like a terrorist or just a bit creepy; this, however, does not stop people wandering around the ship before sunrise. There is one old guy who I think has been wandering around looking for his cabin since we sailed from Long Beach.

It rained overnight because decks up the top of the ship that don’t get hosed down were wet and looking behind the ship I could see raining falling about half way to the horizon.

Walked around deck 3 about 47 times; maybe less than that but I lost count twice and was held up a few times by heavy traffic (and I mean Heavy!) at the bow and stern turning points.

There is a very good library on the ship, several thousand books; so far i've read 3 books from the library and 2 on my Kindle.