“Be careful with the redheaded women my friend. Very violent… very violent sex.”

As that swashbuckling rapscallion Captain Jack Sparrow once said: “Welcome to the Caribbean, mateys”. Now I have a little more time onboard under my belt, have stopped getting lost every 5 minutes and am just about able to tell my ass from my elbow, I thought a little info about life on a cruise ship might be an idea. All 963ft of the ship basically follows the sun around the world at a maximum speed of 24 knots. Not too shabby for something that weighs 82,000 tonnes… There are around 1900 guests and 800 crew onboard – a disproportionate number of whom are lefties – whoop!

Photo wise, much of what we shoot is in studios set up around the ship as well as when people get on or off it, which I can only really compare to a mass exodus. It still feels a bit weird to be asking people if I can take their photo – usually they just do their thing and I shoot them doing it. We all work pretty long hours and don’t have days off, so the days of the week have pretty much become obsolete – I live on ship time now, baby! (Well OK, ship time and too much Coffee). At the moment I have a cabin to myself, which I’m trying to make the most of for various reasons, one being that living in a confined space with another guy isn’t my idea of a good time, another being that privacy is obviously at a bit of a premium, although there are a few little touches which made my room feel just like home straight away – such as it being completely dark and fricking freezing every morning, due to the air con being stuck on and a distinct lack of windows.

 Our 7 day crossing to Fort Lauderdale was fairly uneventful; I had my sealegs tested a couple of times on the way, but I’m pleased to report they didn’t buckle and my stomach didn’t let me down. Or up. Whatever. Once we got into port however, the emergency generator threw all its toys out of the pram and had to be replaced, which meant we had to stay an extra night while they brought in a bigass crane to lift the new one in. After 7 days at sea and having only stepped onto the embarkation terminal in Fort Lauderdale, we were all itching for a night on the tiles in Florida, but tragically weren’t allowed off the ship, which meant finding some fun elsewhere – in this case on the bow, where we mostly gazed longingly at the shore and started discussing the best ways to get onto terra firma, the most popular being to scale the mooring ropes or jump into the water. A few captain sensibles reasoned that either would result in instant dismissal, but I reckon they were just afraid of the water being cold. I know I was. Hell, if I’d wanted to freeze my ass off in the sea I coulda just stayed at home! Still, I can’t really complain, one of the girls from the cast told us she hadn’t been home for 18 months and her home was less than half an hour from where we were docked. So near yet so far I guess….

 When we finally set sail for the Caribbean the next day we were behind schedule so had to skip Grand Turk and head straight to Puerto Rico. Random fact time: Puerto Rico was the first country to ever field a female rider at the motocross des nations in 2008. And bloody quick she was too. And no, I don’t really care if you don’t care, it’s not like I enjoy having to listen to people talk bollocks about football all the time! Anyway, it’s an American territory (apparently there are more Puerto Ricans living in the U.S. than on the island itself), they have a lighthouse which was designed by Gustave Eiffel (you’ll know him for designing something else) and it’s where the Pina Colada was invented. Sticking with pioneering beverage based discoveries, it was also the first place I was ever offered free Mountain Dew refills. Niiiiiiiiice! After somehow managing to tear myself away from said promotion of the amber nectar (well OK, green), I hopped back on the ship and woke up the next day in San Maarten. Owing to some mandatory new crew training onboard I was unable to hop off and check it out, but don’t cry for me Argentina - we’ll be visiting these islands for some time to come, so I’ll get to check it out next time. Plus I got to squirt a fire extinguisher into a box during training, so it wasn’t a completely wasted stopover after all. From there we had one seaday before arriving at Half moon key, a small island which is owned by Holland America Line specifically for its guests to use, which is shown in the pics. It’s pretty much your stereotypical Bahamian (yep, it’s a real word!) island where the water is bluer than the bluest blue times infinity, the sand is stupendously white and they have a place where you can feed the local Stingray, so all things considered just another crappy day in the office! This is where everything balances out, as during the breaks between work we can hit wherever it is we’ve stopped, slay all the virgins and steal all the Rum. Well, something like that anyway, give me time…...     

Thanks for those of you who’ve been in touch or left abuse, etc. I’ve sorted it so you can just leave comments below from now on should you wish, aswell as a couple of other adjustments people have suggested. Hey, it ain’t all about me, folks, honest! Speaking of which, dashing drummer boy Dave Schlong is coming up with a list of things for me to photograph whilst I’m away, so should you wish to add something please get in touch. Finally, in case you were wondering, this post’s title came courtesy of a very friendly elderly gent I met on his last morning onboard. He came over to where I was sitting and we had a very pleasant chat about where each of us was from and previous cruises he’d been on, etc. Then, as his group was called for debarcation he put his hand on my shoulder and with a twinkle in his eye shared said pearl of wisdom, which made me laugh so hard I nearly choked on my waffles – even I’m not usually one for smut at breakfast time but I guess it’s true what they say, sometimes old guys do rule.

Thanks for reading.

"I don't remember whereabouts in your gallery our photo was. But it was quite shiny"

Welcome one and all to my shiny new blog, in which I’ll be waxing lyrical about the goings on onboard my new home, the M.S. Westerdam. Join me for weekly(ish) photos, misadventures, genius quotes and a whole load of stuff I haven’t even thought of yet. Rather unusually, I may actually have to change the habit of a lifetime and impose some self censorship, owing to the fact that anything I post on here essentially has the potential to get me fired. Oh well, here goes….  

 As is the case with many of the previous adventures in my life, this one began with a bit of a challenge. Hopping into a taxi at Lisbon airport, I handed the driver the address of what I thought was where the ship would be. Eventually we arrived outside a building which was fairly impressive but most definitely not the MS Westerdam. At this point the driver gesticulated to say “here we are”. After telling him numerous times how I was really after something that would float, and wishing I knew more Portuguese, he eventually realised I wanted to be in the port across the other side of town. Fast forward 15 minutes to our arrival at the ship, where some smooth negotiation was required on my part as I realised that owing to our earlier detour I was now slightly short of the full fare. As I counted out my last cents into the guy’s hand he realised I had literally nothing more to my name and let me off the last couple of Euros. Once again, my ingenious façade of complete disorganisation – in this case arriving in a country with a wrong address and insufficient funds for a taxi ride - appeared to have worked….

 After hopping onboard, having a bit of a safety talk and a tour of the ship, my assigned photography team buddy Kenny wasted no time to introducing me to the Officer’s bar, where I met a few of the crew, whose generosity resulted in my not buying a single drink all night. For once though, this had nothing to do with my being tighter than a Badger’s backside (even I can’t complain about $1 a beer), rather the fact that due to a glitch on the ship’s system I was registered as underage and therefore wasn’t actually allowed to buy booze. Score!

I originally thought we were heading straight to Fort Lauderdale, Miami, but soon learned that we had an extra stop in Madeira beforehand. Whether this was part of the intended route or simply to welcome me onboard I couldn’t say, but whichever it was we were off…  

My first morning was spent in the photo gallery, most likely baffling my new photo colleagues with my absence of sales prowess and complete lack of till experience to boot. Luckily they’re a helpful bunch and have been showing me the ropes – good job as we’re all on commission! There’s been a helluva lot to learn in a pretty short space of time and it’s proving quite a challenge keeping it all in my head, I think I’m due for a memory upgrade pretty soon.  

Waking up in a new country is always cool, and Madeira greeted us with some very welcome November sunshine. it’s a Portugese archipelago, only about 280 miles square, and they produce a lot of wine. (If you were hoping for more useful information from this blog I’m afraid you’ll be sorely disappointed, but there are plenty of guidebooks out there which will doubtless prove very informative and helpful, rather than mostly irreverent). More importantly, they also have these wicker basket sledge things which two dudes in the whitest get ups you’ve ever seen push and steer down the super steep and narrow streets, broadsiding round the corners and flying over give way junctions with reckless abandon, which apparently has been a tradition for hundreds of years. Realising this could well be the closest thing I’d get to an adrenaline rush for some time, I had to have a go, so myself and new photog buddies Jadine and Kenny hopped in for the 2km ride downhill, which mainly involved being bounced around like a pea in a whistle down the streets of Funchal whilst trying to enjoy the awesome views along the way. Ace. After we roamed around some more, and I tried unsuccessfully to get a pic of the ship in port to whack up here (I’d forgotten what a bitch shooting into the sun can be with no flash) we hopped back on board to begin the 7 day crossing to Miami. I know it’s a bit dumb to have no pics of the ship up on my first blog, but it’s kinda tricky when I haven’t gotten off it in almost a week - patience people! We arrive tomorrow, and apparently the U.S. Coastguard are coming aboard for an inspection – no doubt it’ll be a laugh a minute. Lastly, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that a crisis onboard was narrowly averted today when I thought my iPod had bitten the dust. Mercifully, I managed to fix it, which is undoubtedly a very, very good thing; y’see, no one is quite sure of the effect that depriving Olee of Metal within a confined space would have, but I doubt it’d be pretty. I’ll wager that conducting a similar experiment in the next series of big brother would make for pretty satisfying viewing though….