Alistair Baillie

Greetings from Bahia de Palma de Mallorca! I boarded the Island Star around 1700 on Saturday and after the mandatory safety induction slept until the morning when I was assigned to grease the lifeboat fall wires with the other cadet.

The ship is undergoing maintenance during an 8 day “wet dock” period so over the past few days we have had random periods without water, toilets or air conditioning. There has also been divers down cleaning the hull of the ship and the propellors while we were sitting alongside the berth in Palma.

We had to make a trip out to sea on the Sunday evening to discharge the black and grey water, but we returned early on Monday to continue with the diving operation.

Early morning on Tuesday we had to leave the berth as there were other ships due, so we proceeded to move just over 1 mile out into the bay and remained at anchor there until this afternoon, where we again had to make a trip out to sea to discharge waste water and are on our way back to the anchorage as I type this.

During the wet dock period the navigator and LSA officer are sharing the watches doing 6 hours on, 6 off. As the navigator has lots of preparation still to do for our Caribbean cruises the cadets have been covering his watch, with Dave doing the 0600 – 1200, and me doing to 1800-0000, in between watches we have both been driving the tenders ashore for the crew.

We are expecting to sail on the 14th, or early on the 15th to Marseille where we are due alongside at around 1900 to spend the night and then embarking our passengers on the 16th prior to our transatlantic crossing.

Also as someone commented, the Star is expected to move to Pulmantour in April and will be dry docking in April prior to the transfer. The Island Escape will continue to sail as the Island Escape until September 2009 when she will become part of Thomson Cruises.

I shall write some more later.