Downtime on a Ship

This post comes in response to a request that I received from "miss bliss" and I will happily comply because it is a major issues and topic for any musician or entertainer working onboard a cruise ship.  I was asked to write about what people do with their downtime while working onboard a ship.  How downtime is handled can mean all the difference between a happy contract and a miserable one and also moving forward with professional goals or staying stagnant and stuck in the same cycles.

For almost all musicians and entertainers there is a lot of downtime during a contract.  Even on a busy playing day there is still a lot of time to fill.  Say that on the worst day a musician is scheduled to perform six hours (which for most positions rarely happens), that still leaves 18 hours left to fill.  Consider that on a ship musicians live where they work, there is no commute, there is no cooking as the meals are provided in the mess.  A lot of things on land that take up a person's time away from work aren't really considerations on a ship.  Port days are probably the easiest because there is always the option to go into town for a while.  But there are also sea days, where the ship will not dock while in transition from one port to the next.  Sounds easy, but put a few sea days together and most everyone on the ship starts to go stir crazy.  My personal record was 10 sea days in a row because we were going from the Middle East to Europe.  Seven sea days were already scheduled just for transit time including a day through the Suez Canal (which is still a sea day because the ship is moving and nobody can exit the ship in the Suez Canal), but then the uprisings in Egypt happened and they canceled three ports in Egypt without replacing them with another port, which meant we went 10 days without touching land.  That will test the patience and mental stability of even the most experienced seafarer.

Regular life onboard a ship is not exactly like a free weekend at home on land.  On the ship you only have access to the tv channels that they are able to get, which might be some cable channels but in other parts of the world might only include older movies and a news channel if you are lucky.  And don't think about being connected online 24 hours a day.  As I have mentioned in previous posts, the crew is charged by the minute for internet access.  The speed reminds me of AOL from about 20 years ago.  Most cruise ships use a satellite connection, which means the signal goes from the ship to a satellite in space, then beamed down to a receiving station on land, then sent over to a network, and then all goes back the way it came but in reverse.  You can see why everything from weather to positioning around the globe can make a major impact on the speed and even overall availability of access.  While most people are accustomed to being connected online 24 hours a day on land, it just isn't possible while on the ship.  You can see how much of a premium gets put on a strong wifi connection when the ship is in port.  Any place that has strong wifi will have a group of crew members Skyping, checking email, and updating their Facebook statuses.

Most musicians I know seem to either enjoy ships or hate them (or at least find them a necessary evil at a certain point in their lives) depending on what they get out of the experience.  This all boils down to planning and sticking to the plan.  I've often been asked by younger musicians  about whether they should stick with ships or give up ships and try full time on land.  My advice is always the same: if you are continuing to get something out of working on the ship, then do it while you can.  But if you no longer enjoy it and no longer find it satisfying, then it's time to find something new.  It's my advice for ships, but also my advice for any career, whether on land or at sea.  If you are no longer enjoying what it is you do for a living, then find something else.  Life is too short to spend 30 years or more doing something you hate doing every day.

Finding personal and/or professional satisfaction is key and can be different for each person.  I have worked with a lot of musicians fresh out of college looking to gain playing experience, to have a steady gig, and to have time to practice their instruments.  A cruise ship definitely satisfies those criteria.  Some musicians never traveled much, maybe even went to college just down the road from where they grew up, and want to see the world.  Working on a cruise ship that is in a different city every day is going to be a good fit for them.

But a word of caution in that cruise ships are not for everyone and they aren't usually the right fit for everyone for an entire 30 year career (although I do know some who are perfectly happy after decades in the job).  Cruise ships are full of repetition, from playing the exact same production shows every week for 6 months at a time, to playing the same or similar charts every week at jazz and big band sets, to playing the same rotation of guest entertainers every couple of months.  What might have appeared fulfilling, fun, entertaining, or even challenging at first can become part of the grind.  Same is true for the ports.  My first two contracts were on a ship in the Caribbean and we repeated itineraries every other week (one week was Eastern Caribbean, the next Western Caribbean, then back and forth every week of the year).  At first it was all new and it was nice for someone used to cold and snowy winters to be relaxing on a beach in 80 degree temperatures on Christmas Day.  But a year into it, the same 6 ports started to get old.  While at first I never missed an opportunity to go off the ship, at the end of one year I found myself staying onboard more and more often.  When I went to my second ship (3rd contract), the ship was based out of Dubai and the Middle East for 4 months of the year and doing the same itinerary week after week for those 4 months.  The first year we did 3 days a week in Dubai, then one day each in Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Fujairah, and Bahrain.  The second and third years changed by adding a sea day and eliminating the stop in Bahrain due to the political uprisings that started between our first and second years there.   By the end of my 3rd contract, those cities that seemed to exotic and interesting started to feel mundane.

But I have digressed, so back to the downtime aspect of ship life.  It is really important to have goals while onboard for a contract.  The musicians who are the happiest have something specific they want to achieve during their contract.  It might be practicing a certain number of hours on their instrument, or go through certain books, or improve in specific areas.  It might be more of a side project, something like writing or arranging.  Or it might be to go sightseeing and see new parts of the world.

If you enjoy sightseeing or history, try and do research before you start your contract.  Read up before you visit and it will make your time in a particular port even that much more rewarding.  I would research all of the new places online and save the info on my laptop, then before we would arrive to the port I would read through so I would know what to expect.  In the end it worked for me.  While I was out in the city taking mass transportation and seeing all there was to see, others stayed near the ship in a Starbucks (I still enjoy my Starbucks, I'm just saying) or an Irish bar (every city in the world seems to have its Irish bars).  Imagine what the crew members have to look back at years in the future: "yeah, I went all over the world and saw the inside of a Starbucks in 60 different countries."  I researched admission prices, opening/closing times of places of interest, as well as transportation schedules, routes, and prices so I could use my time as efficiently as possible.  I love the TripAdvisor app, and you can now download city guides for a lot of the major cities and use them offline while you walk around without having to be connected to the internet.  There is another app called Maps.me where maps can be downloaded with turn-by-turn directions and then used offline.  It can be a lifesaver if you get lost on the way back to the ship!

The people who are the most miserable are the ones that come onboard with no plan whatsoever and get bored in their first week.  Or they came with a plan but it went out the window because they either weren't focused or were just plain lazy.  Downtime can either be a blessing or a curse depending on how its used.

One major downfall I have seen time and time again is spending every night in the crew bar.  Cruise ships have a bar (sometimes more than one) specifically for the crew to use at night once they are finished with their work.  Alcohol is cheap and flows easily, which is attractive to many musicians.  One word of caution though, all cruise ships have limits on alcohol consumption, some more strict than others.  Unfortunately as a Musical Director, I have seen several musicians be fired because of drinking too much.  It is never a fun moment to have to appear with the musician in a Captain's hearing where they are fired and sent home at their own expense.  The crew bar can be a cycle, where some crew members go every night until it closes at 2am, then they sleep until Noon or later, wake up for rehearsal, eat dinner, do the shows, and then repeat the process.  One of the saddest cases I saw was an older musician who hated his job.  He spent $500 a week (which was about the average salary for the orchestra members at that time) in the bar and was eventually not re-hired because his drinking led to performance issues on the bandstand. Imagine spending every dollar you earn and then eventually lose you job over it.  I'm not saying that crew should never go to socialize, and isolating yourself in your cabin alone every night is worse, but everything in moderation.

My advice to those about to do a contract, whether it is their first or 50th, is to set concrete goals and stick to them.  Use check points throughout the contract to make sure you are staying on task and staying productive and of course modify if necessary.  If you are planning on arranging 10 charts during a six month contract, then set smaller goals, such as one the first month then two the next month and so on.  In the fourth month, if you haven't hit at least 7 charts, then you haven't been sticking to your routine.   Maybe you got sidetracked by something else productive, which could be OK, but maybe it's a sign that you have been focusing on less productive ways of spending your time.

A sad sequence of events I have seen all too often are with musicians who no longer want to work on ships but find themselves having to.  Ships are great if it is where you want to be.  But it can be a sad, lonely, and sometimes dark place if you feel that it is your only option.  I have seen musicians spend most of their paycheck either in port or in the bar due to boredom.  Then they go home with just enough cash to keep them going during their 6-8 week vacation, then find themselves without any other option financially so they come back to the ship and repeat the process over and over.  My suggestion: not only set goals for using your time, but set goals for saving money.  Make sure to come home with money in the bank.

As far as spending time productively, I mentioned arranging as an example because there are a lot of people that use it to productively fill time and also to make some extra cash during the contract.  Singers, guest entertainers, and sometimes even the ship's entertainment department are sometimes in need of new charts or updating older charts.  The ship's production cast is made up of singers, some of which are required to have their own charts.  As they perform more often, they might decide to pay to expand their personal collection of charts arranged for them, so they oftentimes look for somebody onboard to arrange for them.  In one of my latest contracts, the hotel director and cruise director wanted the orchestra to play some very recent pop music (i.e. "Happy" by Pharrell Williams and "Shake It Off" by Taylor Swift).  Because the orchestra usually uses charts and not whole songs by ear, they paid orchestra musicians to do the arrangements.  Not a bad way to make some spending money.  Plus the skills that a musicians continues to develop in arranging can also pay off on land after the contract is finished.

All in all, ships can be a great experience.  I have been able to visit over 60 countries.  I have been able to play with some great musicians from all parts of the world, who have all taught me as much or more than I could in a classroom.  And from playing every night, I have been able to greatly expand my repertoire.  This past contract I wrote a music textbook/workbook because my wife and I will be opening up a music school.  And speaking of my wife, I met her through ships which would have to be the best result of them all.  Had it not been for ships I am sure our paths would have never crossed.