Alistair Baillie

Hello all, I am still here I have just been rather busy since last time. We have now just finished the last Brazilian cruise – very sad to see them all go, they were a lot of fun, and by the time this is posted to my website I should be sailing north towards Rio de Janeiro with all British passengers.

Since the last entry I have been doing much of the same, checklists, safety drills, painting, scrapping, chipping, dropping anchor, watching mooring procedures and dancing for passengers.

This week we got some time off to go ashore in Buzios and Ilha Grande. Buzios is a really nice place, very touristy and lots of clubs, bars and restaurants along the sea front. They seem to have a fascination with statues as they are everywhere, including one of three fishermen that they have out in the water just off the beach.

While we were ashore the Costa Romantica arrived (about 1800) and attempted to anchor near us, eventually she gave up and left to wait until after we departed at 2000, but I managed to get a picture of the two ships all light up next to each other.

The next port I got to go ashore at was Ilha Grande. Marc, Ian, myself and some others from the ship went to the “waterfall” which really wasn’t that impressive and the water was rather cold there. Afterwards we all went down to the beach which was lovely. White sand, clear water and a very warm sea. After a while I headed back to the pier with one of the dancers and then back onto the ship after a nice long queue for the tender.

Yesterday (well Sunday) we were at Buzios again, as this is the last tender port we visit for the next 2 months the 3 of us were taking turns rotating around 2 of the tenders and the gangway. I managed quite good odds at coming alongside the ships pontoon, getting it correct half the time, the only problem was that I got it completely wrong the other times – including managing to slam into the pontoon when I didn’t reverse quick enough when they missed the mooring rope and the wind caught the tender. The only positive thing is Marc managed pretty much the same odds as me, so I’m not that bad for my second attempt at driving them.

For anyone reading this on facebook, there are a few pictures on my profile now from the past month.

Comments; Apologies for the delay in publishing them but the program I use to manage the comments part of the blog has a habit of deciding it doesn’t want to work.

Finally as someone asked, there is a large number of officers onboard because we are a cruise ship. While the number we have is smaller than the large cruise ships, there are still a lot more than you would have on other types of ship.

At present we have onboard in the deck department (in order of rank); Captain, Deputy Captain, Safety Officer, First Officer, 3 Second Officers (2 Navigators, 1 Environmental). Not a lot really when compared with the engineer officers who total around 30 when you include the hotel engineers and ETO’s.

Anyway, until next time, when hopefully I should have my steering certificate and be in Europe!