Ending the transatlantic crusing and the year

On this ship we have two satellite dishes. A little while ago one of the dishes lost power. The dishes are at the top of the ship inside giant domes. I’ve never had such a problem before and I’ve never done any work on a dish. My assistant, Noel, and I have been up a lot to do tests and take pictures to email back to the technicians who work on these things. One time we took some pictures of ourselves. The power loss is happening at a really difficult spot to get at. We need to replace a part that's in the middle of the pedestal so basically we would have to take the entire thing apart. I hope they send a techinican soon.

So that ends the transatlantic part of my contract. I’m so glad I only have to do that once, it was a tough part to get through. I’ve been in South America a few cruises now and I have so many great things to share. It’s New Years Eve and everyone is excited about the parties tonight. We are also getting to the first part of our cruising through Antarctica. Tonight the sun will set around 11pm and rise again around 2am. I should be seeing ice bergs before the year is out. Happy New Years from the bottom of the planet!

Katie

The Dutch Santa

Sinter Klaas is a Dutch character like Santa only he looks more like a bishop than a fat man. He has two little black nymph like characters that throw things at you and whack you with reeds. I think they are supposed to be the ones who punish naughty children and give them coal. The Crew did a gift exchange one night with Sinter Klass. Everyone brought one gift and we drew numbers and did a random gift exchange where you could trade your gift for any other previous one. They made everyone sit on Sinter Klaas’ lap and they gave the first engineer coal for a joke he made. It was a fun night.

Katie

Canary Islands

I missed out on the Canary Islands which are Spanish owned and off the coast of Africa. It’s a real shame because everyone that got off said it was great place to visit. All the islands are volcanic and some of the volcanoes are still active. There was one restaurant that drilled a big hole in the ground like a well and they would put their food down in it and bar-b-que from the heat of the volcano. I got some pictures from the ship of some local dancers welcoming everyone. I don’t really like to talk about work in the chronicles because that’s mostly boring, but I do actually have to do some work now and again. And these days in the Canary Islands were one of those times I was just too busy to get off. I’m quite lucky to get off as much as I do. A lot of jobs on ships don’t have the flexibility in scheduling that I do.

Katie

Lisbon

We went into wet dock in Lisbon, Portugal. Wet dock is like dry dock only you don’t take the ship out of water. The ship had new piping put in and carpets and stuff like that. We were there for four days and I was hoping to have the last day to run around and see the sights. But there was too much work. We were kept very busy by the Cruise Director doing chores for our department and then on top of that I had loads of work to do in Broadcast to get ready for South America. With everything that was going on, I only managed to sneak off for a couple of hours. But I saw some awesome sights in that time. There was a really cool castle called Bellum castle, well I don’t know if that’s how it’s spelled, but that’s how it sounds. When the tide comes in it’s surrounded by water.

Close to the castle there was a monument to all the explorers. A lot of explorers launched their expeditions from the port where we were in Lisbon, among them Christopher Columbus and Vasco De Gamma. The monument was pretty impressive. You can see a tiny person standing next to it taking a picture. And I really liked the walkways. They reminded me of Brazil, then I remembered this was where they originated. There was even a Christ Statue in Lisbon just like the one in Rio. I wished I could have spent more time exploring, but I did manage to pack in a lot in a short amount of time.

Katie