The Captain's Journal. Hans M.C. Mateboer
I had some trouble tying my shoes evenly with the laces crossed only three times. How in the world could somebody successfully master such an intricate puzzle, and that at one’s back!
Then from behind a slot machine, a man yelled and my mind was torn away from the walking labyrinth of straps in front of me. I knew that the yell wasn’t meant for me, but maybe the man had hit the jackpot, and such a thing always nice to see. Still looking sideways I walked on, not realizing that disaster was imminent.
If only the yell had been from somebody winning the jackpot, it would have been far preferable to me, even considering that a jackpot would cost the company money. In fact, it was meant for the woman in front of me, who, recognizing a friend or her husband, I will never know exactly who, suddenly stopped in her tracks. If in turn I’d seen this a split second sooner, the cruise would have been so much more pleasant for me. As it was, I noticed her unexpected stop too late, and I bumped into her.
During a lifetime, one bumps into a lot of other people. Just about every time, you apologize and walk away from each other and forget about it. Well, for me in this case, there was no walking away. The straps of her dress, which just seconds ago were a source of wonder to me, became a nasty and treacherous spider web in which the twelve shiny gold buttons of my formal uniform were hopelessly entangled. The lady, doing what everybody would do when bumped into, was startled and jumped away from me. This was just about the last thing she should have done, but who could blame her?
The move caused two problems. First, it jerked me forward when I wanted to move back (thus disturbing my precarious balance) and second, it jerked her backward when she expected to be able to freely move away from me. Her high heels didn’t help either when they painfully and with full force stomped on one of my toes. This caused me to jerk my foot away, pulling her left foot from under her and she fell.
As I said earlier, she was a slender woman, but even so, her weight was more than I could carry, what with her hanging from the buttons at the front of my uniform. I simply could not stand up and tumbled over, as well. Not only did I fall, which would have been embarrassing enough, but also, because of our close button-strap connection, I fell right on top of her. She uttered a strangled cry alerting everybody around to our predicament and aghast, with my hands on the floor on each side of her, I tried to push myself away. In this I only partially succeeded. I wasn’t able to increase the distance between us to more than half a foot or so, before pulling her up with me. My uniform buttons were hopelessly entangled with her dress and wouldn’t let go. Even worse, my strenuous efforts only resulted in the woman gasping as the air was choked from her lungs by those blasted killer straps being pulled tight. If only there had been just a few, they would have been torn from her dress. This, too, would be undesirable but definitely preferable to the present situation.
The best and least embarrassing thing would have been if my buttons had given out, and a few did obligingly pop off, but the others held. Of course, it need not be said that within the few seconds this all took place a huge number of people gathered around us.
Even from my very difficult position, I gathered that the general atmosphere was one of amazement. Never before had anybody in the audience seen a woman being harassed so openly. However, even though the consensus seemed to be in favor of the woman, nobody appeared to be inclined to assist her. A situation like this clearly should be savored for a while and not be broken up too quickly.
The casino manager was the first to take action, not so much from a genuine desire to help his captain in distress, but more from the fact that his level of business had dropped to just about zero within seconds. Breaking through the crowd, it still took him more time than I thought necessary to assess the situation and even longer to decide what to do about it.
Being on my hands and knees over a woman, and a total stranger at that, in the middle of a casino, desperately trying not to be too close, but at the same time invoking sobbing gasps when increasing the distance, was very unnerving to say the least.
“Get some scissors and cut her loose,” I hissed at the casino manager. “Somebody must have nail clippers or something!”
As if on command several purses opened and an impossibly small gold colored pair of scissors was produced. The casino manager, clearly unaccustomed to dealing with situations like this, white-faced and with shaking hands, started to stab at the buttons of my uniform and the lady’s straps.
“Ouch! Be careful,” I said, wincing when the sharp tip of the scissor painfully stabbed my stomach. It took more than a few of those stabs, alternately given to me or to the still gasping lady, to finally cut through the straps of the dress. A fine and expensive dress no doubt, but both the lady and I were beyond caring.
Luckily, the man who’d started the whole episode by yelling at her from behind his slot machine assisted in holding her now-strapless dress together when she got up, because I had no desire to get more involved than I already was. The crowd, strangely enough, kept rather quiet and I sensed disappointment that the scene they had witnessed was nothing more than an innocent accident.
When the woman finally saw me face to face and realized who had done this to her, complete embarrassment took over. Still red in the face from the lack of air she mumbled something like, “See you later,” and sped off, her friend doing his best to hold on to the back of her dress.
News travels very fast on a ship, because to my dismay later that evening when I had to introduce my senior officers, I saw the room was filled to the last seat and that even the corridors were crowded. Just about every passenger and several officers looked at me with broad smiles on their faces. It did my normally smooth speech little good.
I never saw the lady again. Like me, she must have kept a very, very low profile for the rest of the cruise.
Chapter 7
Paint
Maintaining a ship in top condition is a never-ending battle against rust, salt, and equipment failures. The marine environment is very hostile to just about any material that is perfectly all right when used ashore, and it’s not just the environment that creates the huge problems. For example, when a basic electric motor breaks down, the natural thing is to replace it. After all, the engineer has a brand new one in his storeroom. Cheerfully, he promises the nice lady in cabin 7078 at her air conditioning will be up and running in half an hour. Cheerfully, that is, until he discovers that his cherished spare runs on Europe’s 220 volts instead of the 110 used in the U.S. and the ship left United States waters for her repositioning cruise to Europe only hours earlier. If that stupid motor only had broken down a little sooner, he could have gotten it off any shelf in Ft. Lauderdale.
Of course, another one is ordered immediately, but when will it arrive? It’s promised to be expedited to Madeira, the first port of call. The passenger and her husband are content with this assurance, as are the increasing number of other passengers affected.
The captain and the bridge officers are preoccupied with that big depression coming in.
“Sir, it’s way too windy. We can’t get in. I recommend we cancel this harbor and move on.”
The captain agrees. The passengers’ safety must be the top concern. Of course, he doesn’t know that a crucial spare part is being flown in. So with his precious spare motor only a short mile away, the engineer, with gnashing teeth, then promises it’ll be sent ahead to Lisbon, the next port of call. As fate would have it, it arrives just a day late in there, and is yet again sent to the next port. Then finally it arrives and the by now almost desperate engineer is ready to hold the thing to his heart only to discover that because of all that handling the motor got damaged beyond repair.
Many times it happens that container ships have their own problems, and the containers filled with sorely-needed supplies that you need are sitting on that ship somewhere in the world in a dry dock. Now, I’m only talking about parts that are available. What about those thousands of items that are nowhere to be found? What about those once-in-a-lifetime designer chandeliers and other unique parts that were so plentiful when the architect designed such a beautiful ship? The supplier is often out of business by the time the part is installed. Of course, Murphy’s Law dictates