July 17, 2011

NASSAU, BAHAMAS

Still not getting off the ship, we have a full crew drill, which we, by law, are required to do every month. We have drills every week for portions of the crew, but once a month, at Nassau, do a full drill.

My portion of the drill runs as such: First there will be a shipwide alarm. If the Captain decides that we need to abandon ship the international signal is seven short blasts on the ship’s horn, followed by one long. At this point my team meets up in an office and we are sent to our sections. Evacuating over 6,000 people is a complicated affair. There are several assembly stations. Each passenger is supposed to know where their assembly station is; the theatre, the dining room, the spa, promenade, etc. My section is on the promenade and is called ‘E’. This section has four subsections, each with a copy of the manifest. There are assembly stations leaders that hand out life vests and make sure that all the team members, and the guests in their section are accounted for. I come up, take their lists, and call in to my leader, in this case, Amy, that all are accounted for, or if any missing who they are. Once this is done, I stand by and do crowd control. Once they have all been evacuated to their life boats, and all are accounted for, the Captain will sound one long blast on the horn. This means that all guests are safe and the crew is to proceed to THEIR assembly station. I then head up to the Dining Room, Deck 4, to my muster point. There the team leaders, on handheld portable devices that uniformly update everyone’s entries, scan our seaman’s cards. Once all are accounted for, we proceed down the stairwells to our life rafts.

When we have the All Crew drills they also appoint certain crew members to be “lost children” or some other “guest in distress” and wander around. They each have a wrist band detailing where there assembly station is, and if they go up to a crew member that crew member is supposed to take them to where they need to go. I had four “lost children”. I had no idea that they did this, and to be honest I am glad I was chosen four times as I did NOT know all the assembly stations. I do now. That is the problem with being tall….you are easily visible. I know that this means I have to know as much about everything as I can, because I will most likely be the person someone comes to for help. It has caused me some angst, and made me wish for the old Marine Boot Camp education structure where you do nothing for weeks except drill important information like this. I am learning as fast as I can though.


The picture above is of Lucy, one of the Youth Staff Crew Members. They help us man the doors for events.  This was taken at the Aqua Theatre.