You know the cruise ship that lost power in Alaska today...?

[Dixon Carter Lee]

I worked it. One of my biggest fears working these ships was their losing power in a sea full of icebergs. Apparently there was a fire and they lost propulsion for a few hours. Everyone's fine. Still, not cool. I've done the Alaskan cruise. The water up there is full of Killer Whales, and none of them are named "Willy". God, I hate the whole idea of dying at sea. Scares the beejesus out of me.

 

[QuickDuck]

Personally the thought has never really scared me, but i can understand how it would.

Some people have a fear of flying (worse now after certain events).

I don't have a fear of flying as such.... for me it is more a fear of falling out of the sky as a couple of aircraft have done lately for one reason or another.

My father was a manager of training for QANTAS and so i saw alot of the goings on behind the scenes.

Logically, my mind tells me it aint going to happen (especially after the background i have), but that does not stop the fear creaping in.

Even more irrationally, it is only take-off that scares me.... the actual flight and landing are fine.

Remebmer the image that hit our tv screens a few years back of Concorde trying to take off with an engine alight? ....... *shudder*

 

[Myrrdin]

I worked it.

Deckhand or stoker?

 

[Starfish]

Comedian

Oh, you knew that.



Dix, I reccomend you don't go on any more of those ships. You'll be better off. It is like me with air planes. I know too much about the horrors of dying in a plane crash, and it isn't the going down I am afraid of... it is the dying of smoke inhilation. That burning pain is too much. I have a fear of dying in a house fire, or any fire at all, so that is bad enough, becaue I have to live in a house.

But the going through the crashing shit and dying in a fire it way too much for me. I'd rather derail and be jostled to death or sink and drown.

It all sucks, but hey.. You've got to have preferences in life.

 

[badbabysitter]

You mean the cruise ship which went tits up outside of Vancouver?

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Well, I don't know about "tits up". I heard it lost power after a fire in the engine room broke out, and drifted off the Canadian coast (below Alaska).

Those Goddamned ships really aren't run well. The crew always seems bored and slipshod, and they hire all these Phillipinos as waiters and deckhands for like 30 cents an hour, so you can just imagine how good they're going to be about letting you in the lifeboats first.

I do love working the ships, though. I love being at sea. As terrified as I am of dying in the ocean, I love being out there, watching the thunderheads on the horizon, lying on the top deck at midnight and looking at the satellites overhead, catching sight of an occasional whale breaching or dolphin skimming along the bow's wake.

I remember once working a ship to Hawaii, and having a terrifying thought. It was late and I took a walk to the back of the ship to stare at the black water. We'd been out at sea for two days with no land in sight...we were WAY out into the Pacific. Anyway, I'm looking over the aft at the enormous wake, and it's a pitch black night, and I realized that if I fell I would be in total darkness before I even hit the water. There was no one about. No one would see me fall. No one would hear me scream over the engines. And the ship was moving so fast and the night was so absolutely dark that there would be no chance of anyone on the Bridge seeing me, even if they were looking backwards. Before I hit the water all my options for survial would be over. No possibility of discovery or rescue, no island to swim to, nothing to hang onto...I mean, just how long can you float on your back?

I shuddered and went back to my cabin and double-checked that I knew how to tie my life vest.

 

[lovetoread]

My dream vacation is an Alaskan cruise.

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

The trip up to Glacier Bay is astonishingly beautiful. You travel up this inside passage for about 12 hours, which, 75 years ago, was all under ice. The glacier has been retreating very quickly, and, as the land is exposed, vegetation and life return. So you start the day looking at these tall, young trees on either side of the landscape, but as you get close and close to the glacier, which takes all day, the trees get smaller and smaller until they disappear altogether, and all that's left is this scraped and rounded mountain terrain, recently unearthed from its glacial prison. Trees and plants have had no time to start growing here yet, and the world looks so stark and barren and close to the sky that you feel like you're getting a glimpse of the earth two days after the Creation.

Then you arrive at the Glacier itself, so big that you can't really fathom its size until a smaller vessel sails close enough to the ice for you get some sort of perspective on its girth. The ice is blue from centuries of pressure, and black from al the rubble and boulders it's scraped off the earth farther downstream. If you're lucky you can catch a berg calve off the glacier, or spot a few seals floating on a chunk of ice.

And the buffet is really good too.

 

[Nomad4112000]

Well Dix I can agree with you on this. I'm the type of person if I can't see the bottom I don't swim in it. I thought of going on a cruise ship but the thought of it going under soon cured me of that idea.

 

[lovetoread]

You are so lucky. I hope to one day see all of it. I also want to do one of those trips where you get off the boat and sleep in cabins and tents.

 

[*bratcat*]

 

[RhumbRunner13]

The official evacuation order for cruise ships.

1. Women with children.
2. Women remaining.
3. Male passengers over 50.
4. Remaining male passengers.
5. Support staff, cabin persons, waiters etc.
6. Ships crew - non officers.
7. Remaining Officers.
8. Captain.
9. The "comedian".

Rhumb

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

First of all...go relearn your geography and where Alaska is as compared to Vancouver Island.

I didn't say anything Vancouver Island. I know where Alaska is, Fluffy-cakes.

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

The official evacuation order for cruise ships.

1. Women with children.
2. Women remaining.
3. Male passengers over 50.
4. Remaining male passengers.
5. Support staff, cabin persons, waiters etc.
6. Ships crew - non officers.
7. Remaining Officers.
8. Captain.
9. The "comedian".

Rhumb

That was funny, except the part where you put "comedian" in quotation marks. Rat bastard.

 

[*bratcat*]

 

[RawHumor]

That was funny, except the part where you put "comedian" in quotation marks. Rat bastard.

LOL

So, how did you keep any kind of figure if you were working cruise ships on an even semi-regular kind of basis? Or didn't you eat as much as the passengers all seem to do?

Or are you really Louie Anderson, as I've suspected all along?

 

[RhumbRunner13]

That was funny, except the part where you put "comedian" in quotation marks. Rat bastard.

You know me, Dixie, I "only" cut and paste!

Rat Bastard

 

[*bratcat*]

One other thing...

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Well, you should have, Prickly-lips...cause the boat lost power just outside of Nanaimo which is approximately 2 hours from Vancouver by ferry. Nanaimo happens to be at the southern end of Vancouver Island which is a hell of a long ways from Alaska.
Damn Americans.

I heard a story about a Holland American cruise to Alaska. It could have happened off the Alaskan Coast or the Canadian Coast, I didn't really hear where in the water the incident took place. Do I have to include longitude and lattitude with all my posts about primal fears? Did I mention Vancouver Island? Is it true that excessive masturbation kills brain cells?

 

[*bratcat*]

 

[sunstruck]

Is it true that excessive masturbation kills brain cells?

Are you volunteering for a case study?

I was on a sinking boat once when I was 12. Our sunfish got caught in a freak summer storm and bashed into a sandbar. Fortunately the coast gaurd after only 20 minutes of floating around like seaweed and the storm was brief. It was frightening, but not terrifying, and the water wasn't very cold even though we were out pretty far.

Lost the fish though. That sucked.

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Re: One other thing...

The ship lost power at about 7:30 pm Sunday, which I think even in LA terms means the day before yesterday.

Honey, I heard the report quickly on the local news. I didn't call the channel for a transcript. I also don't know if it was Taco Night at the midnight buffet.

THIS is why Canada is not a world power.

 

[*bratcat*]

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

No...but you said "You know the cruise ship that lost power in Alaska today...?

Yeah, and then later I said it was off the coast of Canada.

Here, I'll spell "alot" wrong so you can point that out, too.

 

[*bratcat*]