Contract Finished!

Anna in front of the performing arts center
in Reykjavik, Iceland

After 7 and a half months onboard the ship, my contract is finally finished.  No matter how good a contract turns out to be, it is a great feeling to step over the gangway one last time to go on vacation.  No more checking your watch in port to make sure you aren't late coming back to the ship, and no more morning crew lifeboat drills.

In 7 and a half months onboard the ship, I traveled 39,107 Nautical miles (45,000 statute miles, meaning just under 2 times around the world at the equator) while visiting 94 different ports in 41 countries/territories.  Out of those places, 65 ports were new to me as were 21 of the countries.  After 7 contract working onboard ships, I have now been to 133 different cities in 56 countries.  Yes, I know I am a nerd because I keep track of everything.

Sibelius monument in Helsinki, Finland

The best part of my contract is getting to work with my wife, Anna, who is a featured singer onboard the ship.  Out of my 7 and a half months, she was onboard for 5 of them.  I am very fortunate to travel all over the world and perform and also be there with her.  I have a great deal of respect for the thousands of crew members who have to leave their families to earn a living out at sea.

Statue of Rimsky-Korsakov
in St. Petersburg, Russia

This last contract was professionally challenging, but rewarding.  For the last 4 months, I was the Musical Director onboard the ship.  This adds quite a bit of extra responsibility when it comes to scheduling and organizing the musicians onboard.  My previous Musical Director experience was on much larger ships, so I thought being on a smaller ship would be easier.  In some ways it is true because there are less musicians to manage, but when it comes to scheduling, the smaller the ship, the more schedule changes.  I think with larger ships, there are so many different pieces to the puzzle that schedule changes are incredibly difficult so they don't tend to happen as much.  On a smaller ship, there are far fewer venues and people involved so because changes can happen quickly, they do very often.

Faroe Islands, where houses have grass
on the roofs.

One of the most rewarding parts was watching my wife continue to develop her headliner show.  She had performed it in the past, but over her five months onboard she continued to make changes and add in new arrangements.  She was performing her show every cruise in the main theater which gave her the change to try things out.  It was fun watching her work with her arranger, Naldy Rodriguez (one of the best I have ever had the chance to work with!), as they added new medleys to the show.  Not just being a proud husband, but her arrangements are by far some of the best I have performed; they push the musicians in a good way, the arrangements make a 7-piece band sound really full, and there are no errors which makes for a happy Musical Director!

St. Andrew's Golf Course in Scotland.
Too bad I don't play golf!

Another rewarding part is being able to travel to so many different places.  I started my contract in Hong Kong and the ship was in Asia for the first couple of months before heading east towards the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal, then going through the Mediterranean and eventually up to Scandinavia and the Baltic, up to Iceland and back, before coming to the British Isles and I finally finished in Lisbon, Portugal.  I had never been to Scandinavia and Russia before nor the British Isles so it was nice to see whole new areas of the world.

Childhood home of Paul McCartney,
where he and John Lennon wrote hundreds
of songs in Liverpool, England.

It's time now to get caught up on the many things that need to be accomplished before going out again.  The most important is getting new pages added to my passport.  I remember when I received my first passport, I was so proud of my first few visa stamps.  I wanted my stamp from every country (even though most countries don't stamp passports for crew members).  By the end of this contract, I was counting down the last few empty pages, hoping I wouldn't run out by the end.  I finished with 2 half pages, even to get me back to the United States.  Luckily U.S. citizens can get extra blank pages added to current passports, although the price is almost the same as a new passport.  But considering I still have 4 years left of my current passport and there are important visas that are still valid and that I will continue to use, I opted to add pages instead of getting a whole new passport book.

Victor Hugo's house in St. Peter Port, Guernsey
in Channel Islands.  The black desk in the corner
is where he finished writing "Les Miserables"

Now that I am back in the world of high speed internet and no rush to get back on a ship before sailaway, I will have the opportunity to continue to add to the blog.  There are more things I want to discuss, especially things I have witnessed with new musicians over the past seven and a half months.

O'Donoghues Pub in Dubline, Ireland, where
the band The Dubliners started performing