Long Overdue Update

So it has been a while since I last wrote a post... a long, long while.  I wish I could have a really good excuse, but it was just a matter of things got busy once I was on the ship and continued for the next 8 months and then got home and was busy there as well.

Being back on land really reminds us how much technology and communication plays a part of our every day life.  On the ship, phone calls are pretty much for emergencies and internet access is a commodity that is charged by the minute.  On my last 3 contracts, we were able to buy an internet package of $30 for just over 6 hours of access.  And the signal is a satellite connection that makes 1997 AOL dial up speed seem fast.  So next time you complain that you are paying $20 a month for high speed data on your phone, just know it could be much worse.  At our best rate, unlimited internet on the ship would be over $2,500 a month.  Even worse, the rate for passengers would work out somewhere around $25,000 (this is no exaggeration, their rate is somewhere around 60 cents per minute, just do the math from there).

So what were we up to for the last 8 months?  I started my contract in November in Athens, Greece at the start of the crossing, meaning that the ship was moving locations around the world, this time from Europe to Asia.  We spent about 4 and a half months throughout Asia until returning to Europe where we finished the contract on July 4 in Southampton, the port for London, England.

All in all we visited over 40 countries on three continents (Europe, Asia, Africa).  I added seven new countries to my travel list, bringing it 65 countries visited while working on a ship and 68 visited in my lifetime.  Some of the new ones were fun and exciting and a couple of new ones were major disappointments... more on those in a separate post.

During this past contract a lot happened with different opportunities and things that will be happening for us in the future.  I will give a full update later, but this past contract will be our last where my wife was in the production cast and I was a member of the ship's orchestra.  We have learned to never say never, but this is the right time to head in a different direction.  Everyone on a ship laughs when a crew member says it will be their last contract.  For many, they say it every time and make their way back to the ship contract after contract.  But right now we have several opportunities to continue doing what we love in different venues so we will take it.

My goal is now being back on land will give me the chance to continue writing right here.  We will continue to travel and perform and we will also be working on land so I will surely have plenty to write about.  At least it will be easy to improve from the amount of time from my last post to this one.