Alaskan Adventures Day 7: Sea Day

Sea days are weird. You are stuck on a boat, but it is huge so there are plenty of activities to do. Troy and I were pretty tired today so we kept it low key, hanging out in the room and whatnot. I did some laundry, which is super weird – laundry on a ship. While I was doing laundry, Troy saw a humpback whale pass within 100 yards of the ship slapping his tail on the water the entire time. I cannot believe I missed it! He said it was unbelievably amazing.

Syd played in the tree house a bunch. Donna, Sheri, and I attended a wine tasting which was way over our heads. We drank all the wine before they started talking about the second one. We left to hear a talk about the crew which was really interesting. Here are some things we learned:

• The crew members are all from foreign countries and, dependent upon the country, their contract is anywhere from 4-9 months long.
• They work literally every day of their contract, rarely getting any time off whatsoever. If they do, it is a few hours to go ashore.
• Crew members work their way up by starting in the crew quarters serving other crew and then get promoted to the passenger services side of things. It took our server, Daisy – who we have each night, 8 years to reach the status of a server in the dining room.
• Crew stay in rooms of anywhere from 2-4 people, some rooms sharing a bathroom with another room. That means up to 8 people sharing a bathroom down below.
• The ship arrives in Seattle and they have less than 4 hours to prepare it for the next group of guests to arrive. It only spends 10 days every 2 years “out of service” when it is in a dry dock being serviced. 
• The ship has two more cruises to Alaska and then it is headed for Hawaii for the winter. Aloha!

In the evening, we had another formal night. Some people take it super seriously. Honestly, I am not a huge fan. I like just being comfy, but Syd sure looks cute dressed up. While we were eating, something caught my eye out the window and it was a pod of porpoises surfing the waves! They raced alongside our boat but weren’t quite fast enough to keep up with our 21 knot speed. After dinner, we listened to some music and turned in for the night. We got to see one of the assistant cruise directors (who usually runs games and activities) have her debut performance on stage singing Adele and she was amazing! That was a really cool experience. Tonight, the boat is really rocking – big waves out there! Enjoy some of our formal pics from the cruise with this blog post! :)