Loveboat?

So Valentine’s Day has come and gone, showing in its wake, that ship life is not shore life.

Amongst the funnier aspects of Valentine’s Day was our Crew Officer’s hopes and expectations. The Crew Officer onboard is like a wing of human resources. His responsibilities include placing crew into cabins. For particularly popular cruises, there are more crew aboard, sometimes out numbering space available. This is currently the case. It requires people to double up. This means officers with single cabins are encouraged and even paid to give up the privilege of single occupancy and share their cabin with another.

The Crew Officer facing a shortage of beds was hoping for a particularly romantic Valentine’s Day. If a large portion of the crew would find someone to love it would increase double occupancy, and reducing his need to find beds for people.

Romantic of him, huh?

Also with Valentine’s Day came a number of engagements. The wonderful thing about living onboard is meeting people from all over the world. The problem with finding love aboard, is it is from all over the world. Peter of Sweden found Petra of Australia. (They are not engaged, but it is just a matter of time.) Maria, Norwegian, is engaged to Benjy, Filipino.

They then have to answer the question of which country to live in. In the case of Benjy and Maria, this includes learning a new language.

(On the up side, one of them rarely has to see the in-laws.)

In Antigua, just the other day a good portion of the ships crew wore their nicest beachwear for the beach wedding of two crew members.

The reception at a beach front restaurant was cut short by sailing time, 5 pm. (All crew had to be aboard at 4:30 pm.) The bride and groom were punctually at work an hour later, 6pm.

Another oddity of ship life, is the expiration date. Most relationships have an expiration date of the earliest contract end date. We live aboard for one contract, which varies from a few months to ten months. Contract scheduling results in people leaving the ship staggered at random. When two people get together, say Gabor and Kelly, and Kelly leaves September 30 and Gabor December third, then there is often an unspoken agreement that the relationship is over on September 30.

It is possible, with people from different countries, and different schedules, and even working different ships, that couples will never see each other again. Some people will resume or commit to their relationship until they are both onboard again. Some couples do the long distance relationship thing. A lot of crew members have significant others at home whom they don’t see for many months at a time. Then there are even the odd few married couples aboard. Louise and Ben have been married eight years. They live together aboard but rarely have vacation together due to scheduling.

It all makes for an unusual relationship life.

Hope you had a romantic Valentine’s Day, and not just to increase double occupancy.