It was the year 2000 and I was done running a dive center in Stockholm.
One day I received a telephone call. “Hi, I’m Ann Krafft. We are looking for a Watersports Manager on the cruise line Royal Clipper.”
“A cruise ship? Hmm, I’m not sure,” was my quick reply.
“Please check out the website before you say No,” she said.
I did. And I saw her… She was a beautiful 5-masted 400-foot ship built that year in Gdańsk, Poland.
So Ann Krafft and I talked again. She mentioned that it was a high-standard boat and the crew can’t have tattoos, piercings or long hair.
“Those are exactly what I have! And I’m missing a front tooth…”
“No, no, we can’t have those! Your tattoos, we can’t do anything about. But please fix your tooth and cut your hair. And we need you in Barbados in two weeks!”
Getting Ready for Work
Without paying much attention to where I was supposed to go in a couple of weeks, I went in search of a tooth.
“But that’s your image!” My dentist declared in abject horror. He solved the problem though, and that tooth held for 15 years. He was the best dentist I have ever had.
Six hours before I boarded the plane I had a new tattoo: a mermaid courtesy of my very good friend, Xiao Yu.
Reporting for Duty
I flew to where I thought I was supposed to go… to Antigua in the Caribbean. It was the bloody wrong island! Friendly staff helped me get on the right Caribbean island, Barbados.
We departed that very evening. The first thing that happened as we were leaving was a Filipino deckhand losing three fingers in the roll of setting up the sails. After turning on our flashlights, we hunkered down and started looking. We found a couple. He got sent home.
So what the hell was my work?!
I got a nice white uniform, with two stripes on my shoulder. It meant I was an officer and had to attend morning meetings.
So there I was in the morning, wondering what my schedule was. What was my work? The ship was new and it turned out nobody knew what my work or schedule was, or what I was supposed to do more than set up the Watersports department. Great!
We were visiting leeward and windward islands and I was on a 7-month contract. I had a lot of fun! And a lot of drama. I did one contract in 2000 and another one in 2004 to open the new Croatian route.
Winging it
I really didn’t receive any direction from anyone. The captain was the captain of the ship, the cruise director said he was in charge of the land trips that were organized by the land operators, and the hotel manager… well, he took care of the boat and the guests on the ship. Makes sense.
So I took the sea charts and made copies. Each time I came to an island for the first time, I called the bridge and the captain and I would be out for four hours looking for dive sites. I went out on the 115-hp Zodiac RHIB and dove solo like crazy! When I needed new areas to discover, I would ask the fishermen to help me find the reefs. We had good dives!
Except for St. Lucia and Dominica, where a local guide was needed, I was diving solo around the leeward islands. It was really a blast of freedom!
Occasionally I would do a Discover Scuba or a certified dive with the guests, if they were interested. I would normally check before the 240 souls boarded if they wanted to do some dives on the trip.
Swinging it
The only cloud to this otherwise happy adventure was that at the end of the day we had to go around the tropical bar attending as the gigolo of entertainment.
I worked everyday for 7 months straight. There were those who had been onboard for over a year. We were 200 crew members and over 20 nationalities. If you wanted to make a soap opera, this was the place.
I had both wonderful and terrible memories from those two contracts. I don’t regret it, but I will never ever do it again!
