My First Days

After 3 days of training, I finally got out on a boat on Friday (yesterday and today, too).  The tour I did on Friday was the National Park Tour (which Teres and I did last year, but our day got cut short because of rough seas), and yesterday/today I did the Northwestern Fjord Tour.  

Red line is the Bay Tour (which I haven't done yet), blue line is the NPT, and the NFT goes all the way towards the NW Fjord (obviously).

So, what does my job as a deckhand entail? Here's a typical day (so far): arrive 2 hours before the ship departs to prep everything for the passengers. Some trips offer complimentary breakfast pastries on board, so we have to bake those, and other trips just sell food in the galley. We have to make sure all the food is stocked, get the coffee made, and finish any other last-minute jobs.  Once the passengers begin boarding, we may be taking their boarding passes, greeting them, or even be a "catcher"- standing inside the door, waiting for a passenger to miss the step up into the boat, and grabbing them before they fall.  Once all the passengers are on (and the number varies, but most ships can hold 100-150), we have to go release the dock lines.  Line handling is a very daunting task, and I didn't get a proper training class on it, so I've been avoiding it. Until today.  The senior deckhand made me do the bow line today (at the front of the ship) and thankfully it wasn't too bad, but seas were calm and we had someone on the dock to help hand us the line.  I'll do a separate post on line handling later (try to contain your excitement!)

As soon as we're underway, we do a life jacket demo, and then it's on to other tasks as they pop up.  Many tours serve lunch on board, so we have to assemble that- chicken Caesar wraps. Let me tell you about the pure joy of making/assembling 60-100 wraps...After this summer, I will definitely need a break from Caesar anything! At some point, we distribute lunch, clean up, etc etc.  Whenever there's a wildlife sighting, we go out on deck to make sure everyone can see what's there and most importantly, make sure everyone is being SAFE while out on deck.  Safety is key- many captains do drills multiple days per week, and they can be anything from a medical emergency, to fire, to man overboard.  Deckhands need to know where all the safety equipment is (fire extinguishers, fire hoses, AED, life rafts etc), know where all the electric breakers are, etc etc.  

That's all I have for this post- I'm super tired today, because working the NFT is a long (about 12 hour) day, plus my bunk bed SUCKS.