Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Unintended Consequences 1/23/2013

Today, as nothing much is happening aboard Silver Whisper, I thought it may be amusing to reflect on a number of things that have happened on our cruise through the South Pacific.  We have come nearly seven thousand miles from Los Angeles and have seen a lot of empty ocean.  The color of the water changes from time to time.  Occasionally a bird appears.  We have visited only five islands in almost three weeks.  Two of those visits were rain drenched; two others rain splashed. Two thirds of our sea days have been at least partly rainy, but oddly enough we have had a great time with lectures, cooking demonstrations and much comfortable reading by the pool between rain showers.  But as a result of the many sea days, small happenings aboard ship become the subject of raging gossip.  We tend to magnify things well beyond their real importance. Though, some things really are important.

Silver Whisper was scheduled to stop at Rarotonga in the Cook Islands on Saturday, January 19.  The day was mostly bright and sunny.  We saw a few showers on the island's mountain center as we approached but they quickly burned off.  By the time we arrived at the anchorage we were in brilliant sunshine. Rarotonga has no sheltered anchorage.  It is a mostly round volcanic island with reefs close in to its rocky shore.  The tiny pier near the town of Avarua had a breakwater big enough only for a tender to land. The ship remained offshore in moderate swell, unable to anchor or launch its tenders.  After the Silver Whisper hovered at the anchorage point for a few minutes, the Captain came on the loudspeaker system to announce that it would not be safe to launch any tenders due to the swell.  We would be heading straight to New Zealand, two thousand miles away.

Michael and I took some pictures of Rarotonga as viewed from the sea.  Notice the picture of the tender handlers waiting for the order that never came to lower the tender.   This was a close as we were going to get.  Michael had been at the same exact place four years ago in late 2008 with the exact same result. Mark, the Shore Concierge, told us that he was 0 for three attempts at landing.  There is good reason that Rarotonga is considered a remote and inaccessible island.  The unintended consequence of missing Rarotonga is that we will have a full day at our next anchorage, New Zealand's Bay of Islands, instead of the planned half day stop. This part is good.

The event that triggered my starting this blog entry with the title Unintended Consequences wasn't as good.  It has to do with the ineptitude of the laundry department.  More than a week ago, right after our afternoon in Nuku Hiva, I discovered that a pair of my pants was missing from the afternoon laundry delivery.  One of the privileges of having more than 100 paid days on Silversea is that one gets free laundry.  Every two or three days we hang a bag of dirty laundry outside our door in the morning and sometime that afternoon it reappears in our closet, clean and pressed. Nice - when it works.  Our butler is in charge of pickup and delivery.  The laundry department, somewhere in the bowels of the ship does the work. 

This time an item was missing.  I gave our butler a description of the missing pants (tan).  Several hours later a pair of XXL gym shorts (dirty white) appeared.  I sent them back with a better description of the missing pants.  We waited a few days and escalated the problem to the Guest Relations Manager.  This was when we found out that there was a problem of misdelivered laundry on the entire ship.  My pants remained missing for well over a week.  Michael was of the opinion that they had been placed in another passenger's closet, possibly one who had left the ship at Papeete or even a world cruiser, and wouldn't be discovered until that passenger unpacked, or possibly months later when she tried to wear them and they were too small.

We negotiated a credit for the value of the pants and almost forgot the incident.  Except. . .

One evening, a day after a recent formal dinner, a pair of pantyhose was missing.  By now I was carefully checking the items returned against the list included when the laundry was sent.  Our butler found them almost immediately.  Two days ago Michael wanted to wear his special Dilbert tee shirt ("I'm not unemployed, I'm a consultant.") We could not find it anywhere in the closet. It had been sent to be washed in one of the early laundries. I went to the Guest Relations Manager.  She remembered Michael wearing it.  She immediately phoned the laundry and I heard her say "It is? Have it sent to suite 423."  Apparently it had been hanging on the wall in the laundry awaiting someone's identification.

Last evening, as I was leaving the suite for dinner, the Housekeeping Manager came bouncing down the hallway, my pants on a hanger in her hand.  Another passenger had, indeed, found them in her closet.  Fortunately for all it was sooner rather than later.

I mentioned unintended consequences.  We had been told that the laundry crew was new.  The traditional Chinese laundrymen had been replaced with inexperienced Indonesians.  Laundry had been constantly misdelivered all over the ship.  They were to put it charitably, "in training."  Actually they weren't tagging the items correctly.  The full story seems to be: after the cruise ship Concordia struck a rock and turned over in the Mediterranean last year safety and security standards have been increased worldwide.  Silversea's Chinese laundry contractor employed people who did not speak any English.  They couldn't understand when safety drills were in progress. At least some English is now required so that everyone can understand and participate in the safety drills.  Hence the increased English requirement meant Silversea hired a new contractor who supplied staff that understands English.  They just can't do laundry very well.

Another unintended consequence: sitting on the port side of the pool deck had become somewhat unpleasant because food service carts and workers are constantly bringing food and taking away empty pans from the newly expanded pool food service.  We can now get breakfast, lunch, midday snacks and dinner by the pool.  The hot rocks dinner I mentioned in an earlier post is wonderful.  Lunch often has a "surprise" special presentation – paella, Panini, barbeque to name a few.  These are uniformly excellent.  The problem is that the ship was not designed with a way to get the food to and from the service elevator at the rear to the grill and serving station at the front of the pool deck.  The food is terrific; the traffic back and forth, not.  Compared to the laundry issues, however, this is a small quibble.    When one is at sea for so long, everything becomes a big deal.

Our long sea crossing of the Pacific will be over tomorrow when we will be reaching New Zealand where we will be spending the better part of a week.

 

 

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