Off to the Gallows!

I think it goes without saying that I’ve been busy. As we near the end of season our main focus is just getting through the last remaining weeks mentally intact. Unfortunately, every time I sit in front of my computer for more than 90 seconds I fall asleep. Every time I have a minute in between charters I fall drunk. But with just 9 days to go, the end is nigh.

After our pirate playing, vodka swigging, Steve bashing afternoon off last week we picked up another bunch of guests for a week’s charter, and I am cursing my confidentiality agreement for robbing me of some despicable literary ammo. Let's just say that the theme of the week was if it flies, floats or fucks, rent it. Ii also goes without saying that we were glad to see the back of them. So much so that we couldn’t even wait until they left before we started cracking open the Coronas. As per usual, the galley was the scene of crime, and it wasn’t long before the increasing size of the dough zoo was brought up. It was agreed that it had become rather unmanageably large, and that it was perhaps unrealistic that we’d keep it all year to decorate the next Christmas tree. Soon afterwards the Rhino Funeral was mentioned, followed by appropriate culling methods. We contemplated mass burial at sea, death by walking the plank, another Viking burial (actually involving fire this time), a Hansel and Gretel bread crumb trail across the Caribbean, voodoo dolls, and a good old-fashioned binning. We got carried away before we reached any conclusions, and Kay pretty much piked off to bed in spite of our pleas to stay and play. We were not happy about this, so one by one the bread animals landed up being taped to Kay’s ceiling, as death by hanging. We all got up early to see her face when she woke up to this: 

Finally! I've been trying for about four days to get this picture up but the rug rats onboard seem to be stealing all the bandwidth watching Justin Bieber videos or some shit. Who do they think they are.

When the Cat's Away...

So the last charter is over and done with and we’re on to ANOTHER one already. Fuck.

Having only one day to turn around the boat, we decided to make the most of it and get right on it, courtesy of Kay, with many of these:

This delicious mo’fo’ is called a Rainforest, and if you wanna drink one, you need this:

1 kickass blender
2 measures apple sours
1 measure vodka
1 measure blue caracao
1 measure lime
4 measures pineapple juice
shitloads of ice
more vodka to taste

After we had a dozen of these, I went out and bought the raddest bottle of vodka that looks like this:

Then we went to the beach bar, where we reserved this:

Where Mario wore this:

And this:

And we wore these:

After we did that, we took the tender across the bay to another bar, and there we found the tallest bastard alive, called Steve. Steve is so gargantuan that he is taller than Mini Me kneeling down than when she is standing up. Literally. For someone who looks so imposing he was really easy to bully, and we squeezed a good few pina coladas outta him, just to see if we could.

Sweet.

There's Something in the Water

Taken from about 15m up.

Don't fall in....

Care to Over Share?

So when I said that I was renewed enough to go for another three weeks, I was talking total shit. I’ve had two full days off since the beginning of December and three half days, and now all it takes to slip into complete exhaustion is a day and a half of charter. What this results in is injury and over-sharing. Mini Me already lifted a nail, which fell off a few days later, and she came to show us in that wonderful place where we cook food, the galley.

Kay and I shuddered, squirmed and gagged whilst doing anything to avoid looking at the stumpy digit, which gave new meaning to the label ‘pinky finger’.

‘Blegh, glad that's not my finger!’

No sooner had the words come out of my mouth when I made my way to the cabin, and too fatigued to lift my feet properly, did I kick my pinky toe, and do much the same as Mini Me did to hers. More profanity came out of my mouth than I care to fucking mention.

Too vain to be maimed, I taped that bitch down good ‘n proper. Mustering the bravery to look at it today, I discovered that it had indeed not become one with the rest of my toe. Disappointed, I sought out Kay for advice. I was surprised that she agreed to look at it after her reaction to Mini’s finger.

‘No problem guy, Super Glue.’

Now I’m no stranger to Super Glue for cuts and scrapes, so readily agreed. A few seconds later Spencer walked in to find me sitting on the galley sofa with my foot about two inches away from Kay’s face, lifting the bad thing so that she could Krazy Glue the mofo down. I shudder just thinking about it. Two words. Friendship. and. Overshare.

It wasn’t long after that that we were all shooting the shit about how nauseating lifted nails are when Mario walked to the top of the stairs with the arms raised in the air, victory-style.

‘First solid poop in two weeks!’ he enlightened us.

Bread Winner

It’s a good thing that we only work 18 hrs a day or else we wouldn’t be able to find the time to do what’s important...

Oh What Difference a Day Makes!

The day after this magnificent party I planned to spend the better part of the morning in bed sleeping to make up for the 42 early morning wake-ups on charter. Of course, I was awake at six, even after a dozen strawberry daiquiris, which I assume is my body’s way of saying fuck you.

After I threw away enough glass bottles to fill all the holes in the Great Wall of China, I organised a dayworker to do my work for me and got back into bed until 11:30. Satisfied, Kay, Mini Me and I spent a good while in the spa getting massages, pedicures and the likes, courtesy of our Leader. This was followed by a crew lunch, some shopping, yet more cocktails, an amazing lobster dinner, and another night on the Caribbean lash-train rubbing shoulders with the likes of Richard Branson.

The next day it was back to the grindstone feeling not quite rested, but emotionally renewed enough to go for another three weeks. Bring on the end of season!

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum!

We all stood in a row in the usual position with our hands clasped behind our backs as we waited to bid a fond farewell to the guests. They were still in sight when we tore at our ties, untucked our shirts and got the espresso martinis on the whizz. Half an hour later we were here, 

drinking passion fruit daiquiris and being rather civilised. Just when we thought that things couldn’t get any better, a rum-swigging, harmonica blowing, parrot donning, dirty ho-bum of a pirate staggered through the crowd to the stage. 

Having a particular affinity pirates, I couldn’t believe my awesome luck! What ensued was some real knee-slapping, maraca-shaking goodness where every second word was ended in ‘aarrrrrrrrr’. By the time Pirate Jack played the song ‘What’s the name of the famous pirate?’, whereupon the correct shouter-outer gets called to the stage, I could barely hold myself back. However, I’m not too au fait with much pirate history and didn’t have the mental capacity to answer quickly enough by then either. I realised, in true pirate fashion, that the only way to win was to hornswoggle the buccaneer.

‘Guys, when he asks the next pirate line, all shout and point at me!’ which they did.

‘Arrrrr-righty then, well answered! Come’on up!’

The things we do for free drinks and bragging rights...

The fun continued and the crew got more into it, and out of it. The evening came to a pinnacle however, when Pirate Jack whipped out a conch, blew it for what seemed like half a minute, and challenged the crowd to a conch-blowing competition. I couldn’t have been more overjoyed if I’d have seen a fucking unicorn. I am very proud to say that I won that competition, and walked away with a keg of beer. After we exhausted the bar, we came back for a Jacuzzi sesh, which ended when Magnus kept on falling asleep in the tub and we decided to be so responsible as to put him to sleep before he drowned himself.

As Tough As Nails

So six weeks has passed since the last Jacuzzi party and our last day off, and once again the crew is chomping at the bit. We’ve worked 18 hour long days for a month and a half with no rest and no respite, and it’s been fucking gruelling. Did you know that children in Sierra Leone only work 10 hours a day mining for diamonds? Of course I’ll admit that the conditions here are better, I’m not an asshole.

I recently watched Mini Me prepare to run up the stairs as she did when she first started onboard, and she was too exhausted to even lift her leg high enough that she missed the first step and crawled up the rest of the way, leading with her hands. This amused me greatly but I was too tired to laugh.

It’s when you get to this level of exhaustion that accidents happen. This afternoon Kay and I were in our cabin laughing hysterically at a photo that she had taken of me one night when I was so tired that I foolishly lay on my bed to brush my teeth and fell asleep with my toothbrush in my mouth. Just as we were able to breathe again, Mini Me came in looking rather pale.

‘Sorry to disturb guys’, she started ever so politely, ‘I just don’t know what to do’. She started saying something about a shutter and a crash and a bang and a something else, all of it nonsensical.

‘Huh?’

‘Look’, she said, holding up her finger.

Kay and I both recoiled in horror at the sight of her bloody finger with the nail only barely attached.

‘I just don’t know what to do with it, sorry, can you give me a hand?’

‘FUCK NO!’ I yelled as Kay still lay wriggling on the bed.

Eventually we got up to play doctor.

‘I haven’t actually seen it yet, is it quite bad?’

‘Na, it’s not that bad, I don’t think you’ll lose the nail’, I lied. ‘Just... rather don’t look at it’.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah, it’ll be ok, it’s really not too bad off’.

Just then Spencer walked in and writhed at the sight of the bloody digit. ‘Jesus Mini, what did you do?! Your whole nail’s gone!’.

Mini Me looked physically ill. My logic was to tape it back to the finger and with any luck, hopefully it will rejoin the finger. The boys reckon that we should wait until she’s super pissed tomorrow and then pull it off. It’s only our second break since everyone joined, so let’s see just how messy it gets.

Everything But the Kitchen Sink

So today we did a beach BBQ for the guests and in true superyacht style, we had everything from lobster picks to tooth picks. Damn, we're good.

Fire in the Hull!

If there’s one thing that you want on a boat even less than the captain of the Concordia, it’s a fire. For that reason we practise countless monthly drills to guarantee that we can spring into action without a moment’s hesitation, to ensure safety of our fellow crew members and our guests when lives might be at stake. Tonight Mini Me and I were setting the table when the fire alarm went off.

‘What’s that?’ she asked unfazed.

‘Fire alarm’, I said.

‘Uh’, she acknowledged, and carried on setting the table.

‘I suppose I should go check it out’, I said, as I lay the last few knives in my hand.

I moseyed along to the galley and upon entering I found it full of smoke with no one inside. I swiped at the air a couple times in a ridiculous attempt to fan some of the billows away, until I realised that it might actually be time to consider mentally locating the whereabouts of my laptop and my passport. I descended the stairs to the crew mess to find Leader unsuccessfully fanning the air with a dish towel, and Kay standing over the toaster grinning like the bloody Cheshire Cat. The whole crew mess was so full of smoke one could hardly see from one side to the other.

‘It was fine on the same setting for all the other slices that turned out well’, she said.

I looked down at the blackest slices of what was now charcoal and wondered if it’d be toasted enough for Gale. Moreover, I pondered the fact that it took just one person to set off the yacht’s fire alarm, yet not one of the seven of us were capable of setting fire to a paper boat for a certain rhino/mole/dog’s Viking burial...