Well, I am back in St. Petersberg. Different ship, same parking spot. It is near eleven pm and I just watched the sunset from a deck 13 treadmill. I forgot how disorientating the late and early sun is. Luckily, though sarcastic, my room is very dark. I have a tunnel port hole. By this I mean I have a porthole that looks through three feet of hull before seeing the outside.
It is July 27th, and the high in St. Petersburg today was 63F or 18C. Damn that is cold after being in Mykonos Greece two days ago.
Being on a new ship, of roughly the same design is like being in a fun house. Everything is the same but different. The Officer's Bar, the most important reference, is still deck four midship, but the actual bar is on the aft side instead of forward. The crew office is deck four midship port, instead of starboard. (It is on the left side of the ship instead of the right side.)
The big difference in the ship is the size of the corridors. I know this is a random thing to mention, but that extra six inches makes the entire ship feel larger.
Perhaps most important upgrade is the wonderful cappuccino machine in the O-mess. This makes me very very very happy. For evidence, just talk to me at 7am, post cappuccino.
The strangest thing going on at the moment is the Russian authority's revocation of recognition of the Bahamian Seaman's Book.
To make the long story short, that mean there are over 550 of 650 crew members who are not permitted to enter Russia.
As seafarers we acquire what is internationally recognized as a transient visa, a seaman's book. This book is a formal document issued by the governing body of the ship's registry indicating service to a vessel. Since my first vessel of record was of Bahamian registry, my seaman book is Bahamian. (If I started on a ship of different registry, I would have a book of that registry, Norwegian for example.) The book, the size and shape of a passport, with identification information in the front and pages of contract service stamps, is generally accepted in lieu of a visa as long as the seaman enters as a worker on the vessel of his/her current contract and will leave by the same vessel in a short period of time.
Russia has turned around and simply decided not to recognize the Bahamian Seaman's Book as valid. Thus all crew members with Bahamian Seaman's books need visa. Visa's must be acquired out of Russia, and are a minimum of $100 if you apply six weeks in advance.
Hence, we are all stuck on the ship. It is funny in a cruel sort of way.
Anyway, because of the imprisonment, there is a big party starting in just a few.
Gotta run…
2 comments:
Meeks! What gorgeous buildings and a fun blog! You should be a travel writer!
Damn! I'm going also to St. Petersburg in a few weeks and I thought that the Bahamian book was going to be enough. Thanks for sharing that information, let's see if I can get a visa before I embark.
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