Under Pressure

Cruise # 2- We went to Half Moon Cay, Nassau and Grand Turk this cruise. Half Moon Cay is the nicest beach I have ever been to. It is just one giant beach. I was told that it has good snorkeling so I plan to do that on an upcoming cruise. Nassau was pretty cool as well. We went to a place called Atlantis. All the pictures on this blog are from there. It is the place where Casino Royale was filmed. It is huge. It is part hotel, part casino, part mall, part aquarium. We used our employee discount and got into the aquarium for $15($35 normally). The place had really upscale shops. Ben(my boss) and I found a watch for $22,000. The aquarium was a rip off even at $15. They had one "large tank" and the rest were not much bigger than my 50 gallon at home. The resort was beautiful as you will see from some of the pictures.

This cruise we had Mike Panzeca(comedian), Leighanne Lord(comedian), Thien Fu(Juggler) and Jennifer Fair(Opera Singer) performing. Leighanne Lord was O.K.. Mostly lame female perspective jokes. Mike Panzeca is one of the most interestingn people I have met. He used to be a psyco-therapist. He is incredibly fun to hang out with. I had to be an audience again this week. I hope he doesn't come back for a while because he is hard to work with and his act is striaght out of a 101 jokes for jugglers book. Jennifer Fair is absolutely beautiful and a tremendous singer. We have been trying to hook Jennifer up with Mike. We made him some gaff tape roses to take to her when he introduced himself.

I followed Liz(my handover) again this week. I started doing some things here and there on my own. I am slowly but surely getting to know the shows. It is hard to learn because we have so many different shows. As soon as one show ends I have to immediately start studying for the next show. By the time the next week rolls around I have forgotten most of what I did the week before.

On the last show of the last day of this cruise, we had a major accident. Literally two seconds before we were to start the show a lady walked on stage and fell 15 feet into the orchestra pit and fell on two musicians. The Lighting Tech(Ben) had his finger on the GO button. Both guys she fell on were set to leave and go home the next day. Mark's Bari Sax was crushed. He had a gig in Philadelphia three days after he went home. The lady was taken to a hospital in New York. She separated her shoulder and crushed the ball of her arm socket. She has already had three surgeries with more to come. This lady was well over two hundred pounds and could have hurt the muscians way worse than she did. She said that she thought there was a glass ceiling on the pit. What a freakin idiot. The muscians had minor injuries and were hanging out after the show.

We had a very long "meeting" where we discussed what happened and procedure moving forward. The fleet wide safety guy was on board as part of routine boat checks. It was a good thing he was here and saw the beginning of the show because now we have a witness that policy was followed on this. We took lots of pictures form various angles. I am in some of them for scale and positioning purposesThere will be lots of changes due to this and it will add to the pressure that I already feel form taking over the shows.

The picture on the right is of Ben, John(Piano player) and myself at Atlantis.

Miss you all

Chris