For the past few months, we have been doing two different cruises. One is a five day run to Bermuda. After one sea day, we arrive and spend one night. Then we head back to Cape Liberty which is our home port. The other cruise is a nine day cruise. We depart from Cape Liberty and first head back to Bermuda for the day. In the early evening, we then depart from Bermuda, and make our way down to the Caribbean spending one day at sea. First we visit St. Maarten for day before going to San Juan. Then to Labadee. The interesting thing about Labadee is that, it is a private area that Royal Caribbean has leased. It is absolutely beautiful. Once we have finished visiting Labadee for the day, we then head up north to Cape Liberty again. Not a bad way to be learning.
This last month, I have been doing a lot of work with the Safety team when I have not been on arrivals and departures on the bridge. This is where I have been learning about all the different safety equipment a cruise ship has and how to properly check and account for it. There are many checklists that I have gone through with the safety team. Weekly, monthly or yearly checklists are a few examples. It has been great because each time we have to complete a different checklist, I am able to learn something new about the saftey equipment which is so important onboard. The more you know about safety, the less chance you have of something going wrong. Education is key with this. Training, training, and more training. I was once told that you need to do something 10,000 times to become a professional at a certain task.
Along with the Checklist, I was also put onto the fire team which was very cool. We had a couple drills while I had the task of being a fire fighter. Therefore I had to get all my gear on and be ready to fight a fire if there was one. Additional training is also done for the fire teams as there is so much to learn. The more you do the training, the better prepared you will be if anything does go wrong.
Please note all thoughts and opinions are my own and do not in any way reflect those of Royal Caribbean.