There's a Stray this Way.

So Kay’s new favourite thing to do is find whatever cracked egg / rotten piece of fruit / sticky something and yell ‘CATCH!’ to me whilst tossing the reprobate piece of food in my direction. Just today it was a rotten butternut, which I’m sure would’ve gone straight through my fingers, and a sticky ball of bread dough. This never ceases to amuse her, even though I’ve now caught on. Another thing she's started doing is sweeping all the dirt from the galley under my rug. Whilst she does this more out of laziness than thrills, hearing me discover it really makes her day. The things we do for kicks... 

I spent half of my paltry break on eBay looking for a realistic looking cat turd to put on the deck, just so I can film someone’s horror upon finding it and replay it endlessly for my own amusement. I plan to lead up to this with, ‘Ah, we’re pulling into _______ Marina, I heard that there are tons of stray cats here’.

I'm laughing already.

Let's Say Grace.

The Caribbean is special in many ways. It is colder than the Med summer, always windy, and buying groceries / provisions is shit. You can buy this though, thank goodness...

Hot Face, Quick Legs.

Somewhere along the line I forgot to mention that we actually have two engineers onboard. They rotate, two months off and two months on, so Gale has officially left the jungle until April. Boy am I glad that I won’t have to see his fat, lazy, honey guzzling arse around here for a while. A radio call mentioned his departure and everyone went to hug him goodbye. I hid in the laundry. To my surprise he sought me out for a farewell, which I’m sure is the most he’s walked since the last time he sought me out to reprimand me for putting my magazine on his bed. To reward him for this gesture of what must have been an extreme effort on his part, I shook his hand. It did cross my mind to squeeze as hard as I could whilst staring him down, but that would just be childish.

In his place another Scandinavian has joined us, who’s been here for two years, or one if you take into account the rotation. His name is Magnus. As one would suspect, he is super tall, and blonde with blue eyes. Much like our Scandi-hooligan captain really, except that I am taller than Leader sitting down than when he’s standing up. He is also rake thin, albeit the fact that he drinks about ten Cokes a day, and sounds more German than anything else. He seems to have a sense of humour, although is not downright mental like the rest of us. And he helps a lot, so he's cool.

To confuse things even more, Mario has had to rush home for family reasons the day before we picked up the owner, so Spencer was running around faster than Jo Lo’s personal assistant trying to find a temporary replacement. Word spreads fast though, and after half a day we had people turning up on the docks. Fresh eye-candy for Kay, Mini and myself had us feeling rather enthused, and we issued strict instructions to Spencer NOT to hire anyone under a 7. Not to be trusted to look for the appropriate qualifications, we decided to join in on the interview process ourselves, from the galley with a pair of binoculars. After considering someone whose eyes were waaay to close together, he finally hit the mark.

‘Spencer, Spencer – Isabelle.’

‘Come in Bella’.

‘That one! Pick that one!’

Embarrassed that the guy could hear him, he tried to ignore his radio.

‘That one! Pick him!’

He came in later to tell us that he’d given the job to Hot Face Brad.

Hot Face Brad, although a wee bit boring, is also so super helpful. He was good enough to help me with my ‘woman’s work’ preparing cabins for bedtime. Kay came down to lend a hand too. We were all chewing the fat when he asked what he could do next, and I instructed him to change the rubbish bag. Much to his absolute horror, and mine, therein lay the gift of feminine hygiene. All three of us gasped as we stared in shock at the offender, and Hot Face Brad started gagging just as Kay burst into hysterics. The surprise was too much for Hot Face Brad and he ran out retching as fast as his legs could carry him, and Kay and I laughed until we cried.

The Chocolate Pirate

Before we even dropped off the guests we had the Jacuzzi fired up and the champagne on ice. Kay made some amazing canapés and our Leader bought over a dozen fancy pants cigars for us to smoke, even though he’s the only one who really smokes them. We were in there faster than you can say ‘hot tub’, and there we stayed for a good seven hours. Eventually champagne turned into beers, and then got fired back up again by mojitos and eventually pina coladas. So needless to say we got properly plastered. Our Leader kept on telling us what a great crew we were, Spencer could barely keep his head above water and would sporadically slip and splash everyone in the face, Kay must have dropped about five cigars in the tub and I was minesweeping drinks like a gypo in a country pub. By the time we got out of the hot tub and ready for a night out, Mini Me was too inebriated to make it on to the dock and fell asleep in the crew mess with her face in a bag of crisps and Baby Bel cheese circles. Gale, sober and not partaking in the splash-about, got fed up with everyone for choosing to stay in the Jacuzzi over going for a meal at his designated feeding time, and was long gone by eight pm. You can take a gorilla to water but you can't make it drink. 

El Capitano decided to take Kay and I to a beach side lounge club, and after settling on a four poster lounger-bed, he went to buy a bottle of Laurent Perignon. To say that we were poor company would be an understatement, as he returned after roughly eight minutes to find Kay and I completely asleep. We still haven’t heard the end of it.

Fortunately, our cat nap didn’t spoil his generous mood, as he still hired a Jeep for us to whizz around the island in. We spent the morning redefining what it means ‘to shop’, the afternoon sipping cocktails at a beach bar, and the night eating foie gras and lobsters. He also hired me another day worker.

God knows what kinda donkey Quanesha rode in on, but when I saw her I’m sure my facial expression was similar to that of Macauley Culkin in Home Alone. She is an extra large Jamaican woman with cornrows as long as they were thick. She wore the kind of chunky gold hoop earrings that stain skin green, had nails about four centimetres long with beach scenes painted on them, and cracked her gum with about as much vehemence as someone trying to kick-start a Boeing. And she referred to me the whole time as ‘raggamiffin gial’. She was only on the boat long enough to put down her bag before she laid eyes on Leader’s Cuban cigars, and asked for one in such a way that left no room for refusal. Not wanting to waste any more of my first day off in six weeks on finding someone new, I set her to work ironing in the laundry next to the crew mess. She succeeded in unabashedly asking every single crew member for one of whatever they were eating, and in the hour that she was in there chomped her way halfway through the chocolate drawer. Before she had the chance to tuck into Mario’s sugar stash, I hurriedly assigned her the task of cleaning bathrooms downstairs. When I told her this she said that she couldn't do it.


'Why not?'


'Because my hands are warm from the iron'.


'So?'


'If I touch the cold water I will get sick'.


I stared at her for about a minute, and said, 'Look, are you going to fucking work or not?'. At least that's how my inner monologue sounded, but what actually came out was, 'Fine, you can start by making the beds then'.

Now either Quanesha has never made a bed in her life or she sleeps in a hammock, as I’m sure that even Prince Charles could make a bed better than that. She had bizarrely put the sheet on the bare mattress, the empty duvet cover over that, the coverless duvet over that, followed by the mattress protector over them all, and then the day cover over that hot mess. Even more bizarrely, she seemed surprised when I told her not to come back the next day. She asked me why not in that same, insistent way the she had asked for the cigar and half of the Wonka Factory, but I had already settled on not letting her take a bite out of my only time off for another six weeks too. So I lied and told her that the owner wouldn’t pay for it.

She left with a full day’s pay check and the rest of the chocolate cake...

I've Lost My Marbles

After 6 weeks solid work and no days off, the crew is starting to go a little mad. Add to that the anticipation of the end of charter and everyone is just chomping at the bit. Our coping method for the waves of extreme insanity comes in the form of a bag of marbles. Whenever someone is having a moment, they are obliged to carry the bag around until they are either mentally stable again, or until someone else has ‘lost their marbles’. Fittingly, the bag now lives almost permanently in the galley.

Kay and I had something similar on the first boat we worked on. With owners who insisted on being very ‘involved’ in everything we did, irritation levels were often rather high. The solution to this was a reusable carry bag with a zip on it. Instead of snapping at the owners or anyone else, we would take the bag, put it over our heads, zip it up and scream. Of course, the bag didn’t muffle the scream at all, that would still carry throughout the crew area, but it would guarantee a laugh from yourself and anyone else within earshot. We called it the scream bag, and it really worked.

This afternoon, I found Kay in the galley, with the marble bag hanging nearby, making a chocolate cake. I can’t remember what I said to her, but when she turned around she had chocolate icing smeared all around her mouth and halfway up her cheeks. I fell about laughing and it took us a good ten minutes to compose ourselves, after which we both got in on the choco action. Mario came in and laughed just as hard when he saw us, as did Mini Me. Gale came in and pointed out that I had something on my face. Feigning ignorance I answered, ‘Really? Where?’

‘Uh, around your mouth’.

I wiped where I knew no chocolate was.

‘Did I get it?’

‘Well, no, it’s more there’ he pointed, ‘more to the left’.

This was ridiculous really as it was covering practically the entire lower half of my face. This carried on for a while until none of us could stifle our snorts any longer and he eventually walked out.

Spencer was the first to sample the cake later and he honestly couldn’t have looked any happier. He was just revelling in pure delight as he looked down at the slice of cake in a napkin in the palm of his hand. It was too good an opportunity to pass up, so taking a runner I pounced on him and made a grab for his cake. Raw instinct took over and in one movement he swung me off and planted his entire piece of cake in my face, giving it a good rub. I was momentarily stunned, and when I got around to joining in the laughter, pieces of cake blew out my nose.

En route to my cabin to clean up I saw Gale, being as astute as ever he pointed out, ‘You've still got something on your face’...

As Sweet as Honey...?

On a boat creature comforts are essential. They are those little necessities that improve your quality of life and make you go ‘ahhh’ when you sit down to enjoy them. Some people have many creature comforts. These people are called fussy assholes.

My creature comfort is a ready and steady supply of protein in any form, which makes me go ‘rraaaah’ instead of ‘ahhh’, and Spanish olives. This goes for Kay too. Our Leader’s creature comfort is uber strong coffee by the bucket load. Mario’s is Susie’s Hot Sauce and chocolate, Spencer’s is marmalade and proper English tea, posh bastard, and I don’t know Mini Me that well yet but I imagine that it is probably a step ladder or a pair of Max Talls. Gale’s is honey.

Most of these things fall under the reasonable living requirements category, such as coffee, protein and tea. Some, like imported Manzanilla olives from the South of Spain and ‘magnum’ sized slabs of white Toblerone chocolate not so much, but we get them within reason. Honey, one would think, would fall under necessity. Feeling rather fresh with the boss’ credit card in hand during my last provision, I bought all the things on the crew wishlist, and more than enough to last at least a month and then some. Included in this was ten large bottles of honey, as per Gale’s request for ‘lots’. As it turns out, honey to Gale is like blow to Charlie Sheen, and homeboy just can’t lay off the stuff long enough to even spell his own name. On day eleven of charter he had single handedly finished all ten bottles of honey, and had moved on to Kay’s cooking supply.

When he approached me and tried to chastise me for not buying enough, I flipped my honeycomb.

‘How the fuck did you go through ten bottles of honey in eleven days?!’

‘I use it in my coffee’.

‘And then where does the coffee go?’

‘Well I’d prefer to stay away from sugar.’

I looked at him with disbelief. ‘Do you know how much sugar is in honey? It’s pure sugar!’. I wanted to call him a fat bastard, but I held back, clearly something he doesn’t know how to do.

‘Well I’ve taken a few bottles from Kay, but you need to buy more’, he said instructed abruptly, licking his protruded lips mid sentence.

‘MORE?! What are you WINNIE-the-FUCKING-POOH?!’

I read an article recently about how bees are dying and the subsequent rise in honey prices (cos that shit ain’t cheap), and now I know why. It’s because Gale the lip-licking, gorilla in the mist is working our furry yellow and black friends, literally, to death. He is to honey bees what the Japanese are to tuna, and I find it disturbing that I work with, and supply, the man who is on the brink of destroying not only the Bee, but entire ecosystems the world over.

He looked at me blankly and I looked at him like I had just seen Arnie being elected for governor again. For someone who’s body mass is 50% golden sweetness, he is a real dick.

Exhaustion is a curse

I am literally too tired to write. When I’m super tired, I’m sure I swear even more than usual. I believe so because I’ve been called out on it twice today. This is my response.