The First Weeks as Residential Cruisers

I continue to get interview requests from the media. This one came in by email two days ago, but thankfully was told that my deadline was “in the next couple of days,” so hopefully this is good: I just hit Send on my reply, and now I’ll format it up into a post here. 🙂

At the same time, now that we’re past two weeks in, I’ve been feeling like I really needed to do an update for you all, so I’m killing two birds with one stone by publishing my full response here. Especially since the mailing list just tipped over to more than a thousand people! All it does is let you know when there’s a new post here, so if you haven’t signed up for it, you might want to.

Anyway, reporters rarely use all quotes, and usually are asking questions of more than one source and weaving them together. They have their desired narratives, and I have mine! So you can see everything I wrote, in context. Plus, this way I can put in some of my photos! Enjoy.

The Interview

[My newspaper*] has asked me for an update from the residents now you’ve settled down a bit and have started enjoying your world voyage!

​Sorry it took me so long. Have been tired since it’s “go go go” all the time!

How is it all going? I heard you had some early problems with empty pools, water supplies and toilets not flushing – has everything been resolved? Any other glitches?

What do you make of your new home? Any pleasant surprises/disappointments? Is everyone getting on well or are ​cliques developing? Any gossip?!

We’re pretty darned happy with our home, and the experience so far has been good, and moving toward great.

​IMO, gossip isn’t news: sounds too much like digging for dirt, and I’ll suggest avoiding that approach.

Cliques: Even 100 people can’t all be together all the time (or want to!), but “clique” smacks of excluding others. It’s natural for there to be casual groups, and certainly there have been many even during our time in Belfast. I’ve felt much inclusion, and little to no exclusion, there or since. I don’t think there is anyone my wife and I have “hung around with” for the duration: sometimes we dine or have cocktails with this couple, other times that single, and my wife is great at making new people feel welcome, joining us for dinner. But we certainly don’t expect them to always sit with us, and that would make for an awfully big table anyway.

We like the variety, and sometimes like to just sit by ourselves for some intimate conversation. You know: just like real life!

Pools: I’m not sure anyone has been anxious to use the pools yet: even in Tangiers (our current location), the temperatures are in the low 60s (17-19C). They do expect to have the pools up and running before we arrive in the Caribbean. Seems a contractor brought the wrong parts with them, and more parts are coming at a quick stop in Málaga, as well as a highly anticipated mail delivery (air shipped from VVR in Florida).

Glitches: The thing to remember is, this IS a shakedown cruise. One expects problems on a brand new ship, so to have a few problems early on with a recommissioned 30-year-old ship shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. That’s why many residents didn’t plan to join the first segment from the start. Unfortunately the delay in Belfast created some chaos for us all. My wife and I wanted to be aboard when she first sailed, as appropriate to the owners of a web site called ResidentialCruising.com — and we certainly understood that there would be issues, even if we didn’t expect four months of delays, and are fine with being patient as they are addressed.

Not everyone is so sanguine, of course, as also could be anticipated. The company still commits some unforced errors, such as sending out a laundry fee schedule without explaining it would only be used if the two free laundry runs per week isn’t enough for someone, so there was an uproar until management could say no, relax, you still get free laundry service twice a week! Really: if two laundry loads a week aren’t enough, then someone needs to have more than two shirts in their wardrobes!

Toilets: Yep, we had a bit of a problem. Why? Two reasons:

First, anyone who has had a septic system (vs a sewer connected to a sewage plant) knows that there’s a startup period — it has to be “seeded” with bacteria and allow them to grow. That’s certainly true of ships, and for that purpose this is a new ship, starting the bacteria over from scratch. When at the dock in Belfast, the ship was connected to the municipal sewer system, so then we loaded up 125 new Residents and took off.

All would have been just fine except for the second reason: the paperwork glitch that left us anchored 10 miles out of Belfast for three nights. The tanks filled up, and while the company perhaps “could have” discharged the tanks to sea once out far enough, they were unwilling to dump raw sewage, and I commend them for that. Instead, they paid for sewage trucks to offload our tanks in port at our first two stops while the systems’ bacteria grew to have proper treatment onboard. They took the expense hit without complaint because it’s the right thing to do. So I roll my eyes when the “gossip” is that we have “toilet problems” aboard. In a way, sure. But the reality is, there wouldn’t have been a problem if (again and again and again!) the regulatory sticklers just did their jobs on time so we wouldn’t get into binds. It’s the Residents who suffer from their bureaucratic delays, and really resent the problems they cause being blamed on the company, which really wants to do things the right way.

Bottom Line: Everything continues to improve on a daily basis: many fewer hiccups, an executive chef who swings by tables a couple of times a week to ask us for suggestions, complaints, refinements, whatever. And the company continues to hire staff, including this week a new Resident Services Manager, who has many years in Cruise Hospitality, which I’m sure will help improve communications between Residents and the company and smooth out any operational problems from the Resident perspective. She is already ramping up, interacting with Residents, making it clear that improvement will continue and even accelerate. I don’t have any official numbers, but I expect our population to double over the next several weeks, just considering the number of new voices checking in on the internal online chats. I think there are over 150 residents onboard now, since leaving Belfast with around 125.

What do you think of the ports so far and where are you most looking forward to visiting?

​Everything is so overwhelmingly new and even exhausting. First, I continue to work full time. Then add in a new place to live, new people in the community, a new way of life in general, and then pile on new places, cultures, foods, and sights. It’ll be a bit before we really settle in …and that’s OK.

– – –

*Assuming this is used by the newspaper, I’ll update this with a link to it. In the meantime, I’m choosing to keep the author/publication to myself. Any media wanting to do an update should use the contact form to get in touch rather than lifting any of this text or photos, which fall under copyright protection as noted in the footer. Thanks. -rc

Update: the reporter wasn’t specific enough about my deadline: he had to file this morning. Be more specific next time! (And P.S.: he apologized about “gossip,” saying he was really just looking for anecdotes.) Good thing I had another use for the work I put in. 🙂

Last Updated October 17, 2024
Originally Published October 17, 2024