Ship Log Blog

Ship Log Blog

I write weekly stories from life working on a cruise ship.
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www.substack.com/@shiplogblog

  • Touching Land

    How to stay connected to the Earth when living on the water

    This story was originally published to subscribers of Ship Log Blog on Substack. Get new posts by email at the link below:

    shiplogblog.substack.com
    My hand touching Africa for the first time

    When you live at sea, land becomes a gift.

    My ship contracts are six months long. Over the course of those six months we often visit the same ports over and over again with one central “home port” at the center of every week. There are exceptions to this. Sometimes we reposition, ship speak for switching from one home port to another, often crossing whole oceans.

    On my second contract, I started in Australia, crossed the Indian Ocean to Africa, swept around the Cape of Good Hope, danced with the desert in Namibia, sailed up the west coast of the Motherland, through the straight of Gibraltar and landed in our new home in Athens. A truly once in a lifetime journey. Rarely experienced and for me, never to be repeated.

    I am one month into my current contract. Five months and three home ports to go.

    This contract will reposition a few times. Right now our home port is San Juan Puerto Rico. A lovely base. Beautiful, historic, practical and ass deep in mofongo. All the things a healthy crew population wants from their weekly hometown.

    While stationed out of San Juan we hit a wide variety of Caribbean islands. You know the vibe: turquoise water, beautiful white sand beaches, a kaleidoscope of colorful homes, abundant rum drinks. It’s peak colonialism and touristy as hell, but it’s warm and sunny and calming to the nervous system.

    I am determined to save money (says the bitch who buys an oat latte onboard every goddamn day), so I’m not shelling out cash on cabs, beach resorts, lounge chairs and piña coladas. Instead I get off in ports where there is a beach within a 30 minute walk. If I can find a patch of sand under a tree and an egress into the waves I am happy for an hour of quiet communion with Mother Earth.

    Sometimes there are cute towns right next to the ship with shops and markets and coffee, like in Curaçao and Martinique. Usually it’s a tourist trap candy coated discount diamond shopping facade surrounded by palm trees and iguanas.

    Some of my favorite days are when the crew engagement officer plans events for the “Impact Squad”. This is when a group of us go out and volunteer in one of our ports, usually doing a beach clean up. Not only is this a great way to see a part of an island I might not usually get to see, but it also helps assuage some of the guilt I feel for selling my soul and working on a fucking cruise ship.

    Impact Squad in Barbados

    Soon we’re sailing north. We will reposition to New York City for the month of April. This is exciting for me, as NYC is home. Sailing into New York harbor under the Verrazzano Bridge and past the statue of liberty (long may she stand) is going to be thrilling and probably a little emotional.

    My life is divided into two halves (It’s actually divided into so many more halves than that but that’s a different post). The New Yorker half and the seafaring half. I spend one half of each year in each place. To have these two people come crashing together on my birth month will be… something. I don’t know yet how it will feel so I’ll let you know when I get there.

    Most crew members have never been to NYC. For them it will be a once in a lifetime opportunity. They cannot wait to see Times Square.

    Me? I’ll be running from the ship where it will be docked in midtown west to a rehearsal studio on 54th street to do a run thru of the play I’m premiering at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August. NYC means taking advantage of being home and putting on the other mask for an afternoon. It also means my best friend can bring me that bag of extra toiletries I left in my coat closet.

    Then we cross the Atlantic.

    I’ve crossed the Indian Ocean, I’ve crossed the equator at sea, I’ve touched five of the six continents, but I haven’t done the Atlantic crossing yet. If I were collecting sailor tattoos this one would earn me a single anchor on the forearm. I’ll probably just add another bird to my progressive tattoo by Gerald Feliciano. Maybe a pigeon.

    Crossings are awesome. Not the many sea days in a row but the variety of ports you hit when you get to the other side. I am especially excited about The Azores and Tangier.

    Once we’re in the Mediterranean it’s a whole new ball game. The ports are beautiful ancient cities. The water is teal instead of turquoise, the beaches are rocks instead of sand, and the food is incredible. You can walk off the ship, put your name badge in your pocket and disappear into the throngs for the whole day. I love getting lost in Europe.

    Our first stop in the Med will be dry dock in Palermo. This is when they take the ship out of the water and fix all the shit that’s broken. Our ship launched in 2022 and believe me when I say that four years is a long time for a tin can floating in salt water full of drunk people. She’s ready for her spa day. I love Palermo but sadly they are kicking us off the ship during the two week dry dock period. Weird they don’t want to pay us to sit around and eat their food while they’re replacing the engines or whatever.

    I’ll spend dry dock in Switzerland with my best friend and my mom. I’ll tell you all about that when its’s over.

    The last three months, May, June and July, will be based out of Barcelona. A legend of a home port. We swing around France, Spain and Italy on a constantly rotating itinerary of beauty and perfection. Florence, Rome, Ibiza, Sicily, Majorca, Corsica, Nice, Cannes, ugh I’m annoyed at myself just thinking about it.

    cheesin in Malta

    The reality is everything gets old eventually. Feeling like a tourist all the time is boring. There are plenty of days I don’t get off the ship at all. Sometimes it’s nicer to stay onboard when all the sailors are gone and enjoy the quiet of my office on deck 7 all by myself.

    Crew members find hacks for port. We get to revisit the same places again and again so there is less pressure to get it right the first time. We can volunteer to escort the shore excursions for the sailors and get a taste of that vacation life, but most of the time it’s about experiencing the place as a visitor, a person who wants to really appreciate what makes that place unique.

    For me that is the nature, the food, the language, the architecture. I’ll save a few key points in my google maps in my extensive pre-port research but once I’m there, I’m a bird. I fly on instinct. Usually alone but occasionally with one or two friends.

    Connecting to the land is the balance that makes life at sea possible.

    I always dreamed that I would have a life that would allow me to see the world, I never knew that I would be doing it from the water.

    I’ll make sure to come back here and give updates when I visit new ports that I especially love. I am pretty proficient on all the Greek and Croatian ports I visited on my first two contracts, check out my archive at http://www.shiplogblog.com for those.

    PS. I am in the midst of a deep psychological, spiritual and emotional shift. It is psychically draining. I am trying to balance using this space to process those feelings with fun truths and levity about life at sea. Forgive me if it feels schizophrenic. Forgive me if I take longer than a week between posts. Healing is hard.

  • There’s nothing typical about this

    How I function in a tin can in the middle of the ocean when the world is on fire

    This story was originally published to subscribers of Ship Log Blog on Substack. Get new posts by email at the link below:

    www.shiplogblog.substack.com

    Today I’m frustrated because there are too many people sitting in my spot.

    Two days ago I was elated because I had a spiritual experience while held in the arms of Yemaya in Aruba.

    Such is the swing of daily life at sea.

    You build a routine only to have it disrupted, over and over again.

    There is a place outside on deck seven that I refer to as “my office”. It is my refuge. It is the only place on the ship where there is no music playing. There are big couches and shade from the sun and the waves washing away from the ship for miles in every direction. I do a lot of my best thinking there.

    Unless it’s a sea day, like today, and every one of the 2700 sailors onboard have no port to explore, no beach to get drunk on, so they stumble upon my space and think “OH NEAT, LOOK WHAT I FOUND” and lay down and fall asleep.

    The audacity!

    This is of course their ship more than it is mine. I live here, but they pay for it. Such is the truly zen level of acceptance I have achieved.

    I came here with the intention of giving you a “day in the life” post, but I can’t do it.

    Why not?

    • It’s formulaic and I’m done producing what I think people want instead of what feels important to me.
    • There is no such thing as a typical day here. Everything changes while everything stays the same.
    • Nothing about this week has been normal. Nothing about my life or my soul or my country or this world or even the cosmos is normal right now.

    If you’re witchy like me, you probably noticed all the articles about the big astrological shifts happening this week/month. I’m not an astrologer and I take most things with a grain of salt so I won’t attempt to explain them to you, I’ll let the experts do that. Saturn and Neptune moved into Aries (my sun sign) which is a shift 36 years in the making or maybe 6000 years in the making depending on which corner of the sky you’re interpreting.

    The Lunar new year changed over from the Wood Snake to the Fire Horse. There is fuel to be burned and the fire has begun. There was a new moon and an eclipse and a full blood moon on the horizon.

    I am 40 going on 41. I just went through a devastating experience where all of my codependent and insecure attachment tendencies that I REALLY THOUGHT I had worked through were violently hurled upon me. Like I thought I was being presented with a delicious cake that I had patiently waited years for but instead the eternal jokester snuck up behind me and shoved my head so hard into that cake it went up my nose and burned my eyes and choked me out in a very not sexy way.

    My nervous system went crazy. I questioned everything. All these years in therapy trying desperately to understand myself, as if I could just understand why I am this way then I could fix what’s wrong. The underlying belief being that there is something wrong to be fixed.

    When I’m at sea, I have a lot of free time. The kind of free time that might drive some people absolutely nuts. I come into these contracts with PLANS. Writing projects, fitness goals, journals to fill, languages to learn and books to read.

    I finished my most recent book (The Stand by Stephen King) which is about a million pages long and was the same book I was reading when I went through the aforementioned devastating experience. I needed something very different to read. I proceeded to download as many “classics” as I could (I wish I didn’t have to rely so heavily on a kindle while I’m here but I’m sure you can understand the logistical nightmare that physical books provide)

    My downloads included The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1984, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights (duh), Frankenstein, The Old Man and The Sea, The Bell Jar, 100 years of Solitude and more.

    But all the nervous system regulation I was doing: intentional breathing, grounding into my feet, mantras of “I am safe” and “That was then and this is now” were not doing the whole job, I needed HELP in the weeks between therapy sessions.

    So I went in search of my second spiritual awakening.

    My first spiritual awakening happened in my early 20s when I read books like The Alchemist and The Untethered Soul. I distinctly remember the sense of peace I got from the practice of meditation and detachment that I learned from those books.

    But time took over and I forgot.

    So I started reading Eckhardt Tolle’s The Power of Now. I’m still reading it. It’s what I need. Rewiring 20 years of neural pathways and divesting from an addiction to pain is not easy. In fact it is very painful and confusing.

    Some favorite metaphors of how it feels to be me right now:

    • Being dragged along the muck and silt at the bottom of a river.
    • Dissolving into goo inside a cocoon, fully rebuilding into a butterfly who must fight and push and break it’s way out and then lay vulnerable for days until it’s wings are strong enough to fly.
    • The thick ass seed of a lotus flower that has finally cracked open and must push it’s way through the mud before bursting free into the water and blooming.
    • Trapped in a fucking washing machine full of razor blades.

    That day in Aruba I wrote these words to myself:

    Today’s the day I broke the pattern

    Todays’s the day I took my stand

    Today’s the day I chose myself

    Today’s the day I shed my skin

    Today’s the day I took my power back.

    It was February 16th. That day held astrological power but also personal significance.

    The experience of the last month has been the most painful rebirth of my life, and I believe it will be the most powerful.

    I don’t want understanding anymore, I want peace. I don’t want to shrink myself to make other people comfortable, I want to be big, loud and honest. I want to know that I belong in the room where it happens. I don’t want anyone to ever touch me again unless it’s with love.

    This week in St. Maarten I rode the highest zipline in the world and I chastised myself the whole time for not staying in the moment. The next day I suddenly remembered the powerful way in which I can connect to chi (the life force of energy that flows inside us) as easily as flicking on a light switch and I felt like a powerful magical sorceress.

    Healing is not linear because it is a spiral and holy shit am I riding that spiral right now. Around and around like a blender I go. I’m exhausted, I’m exhilarated, I am DOING THE DAMN THING.

    I’ve started writing to God for strength. GOD. I have a very eastern definition of God and I’ve finally stopped being so prissy about using that word. Interpret it however you want. I need divinity right now.

    We all do.

    This transformation is not singular to me. The old systems are dying. Good riddance. The weak, shriveled patriarchy is gasping it’s last breath. It’s death will be violent. The divine feminine is rising. She will not shrink away and hide her power anymore. Her reign is coming, albeit slowly. The full transmutation may not happen in my lifetime, but I feel it on the horizon.

    The only hope for the human race is spiritual intervention. I can’t say whether we can do it, but I know I’m doing my part. Right now, in my tiny corner of the universe, by facing and embracing my darkness and divinity.

    Here’s your day in the life at sea:

    • I wake up
    • I struggle to get nourishment
    • I hydrate
    • I sit in “my office” to write, read, drink coffee
    • I take pee breaks
    • I giggle with TJ (ship bestie/show partner)
    • I nap
    • I go to the gym (cardio! lifting heavy! it sucks!)
    • I eat again, however unsatisfactorily
    • If it’s a show day, I do the show
    • Breakfast for dinner
    • Bed

    Additions: Have an existential crisis, cry, battle my inner demons, feel guilty, feel enlightened, swim in the ocean, volunteer on land, wander around a new port with cellular roaming turned off, talk to my mom, my therapist, my best friend, embrace the universal truths I have to share, feel scared for the world, feel helpless, delete instagram, resist the urge to live in my pain body, wonder if that guy with the pink scrunchie thinks I’m cute, ignore the DM from the community dick, doubt myself, believe in myself, trust the process, break one rule just to feel alive.

    and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

  • A Peek below

    What’s behind all those “crew only” doors?

    This story was originally published to subscribers of Ship Log Blog on Substack. Get new posts by email at the link below:

    www.shiplogblog.substack.com

    Last night I was walking down the A1A, the navy blue river of buzzing crew business that runs aft to stern on deck four. Carrying my swimsuit in my tote under the bright florescence, avoiding eye contact with housekeeping and tired food service staff amidst a sea of conversation in Tagalog, Afrikaans and Croatian.

    It’s the entertainment department spa night and I don’t want to rub it in. After finishing my first double show, I’m looking forward to getting into this sacred space after midnight with all the dancers and acrobats to sweat out the stress of moving day in the sauna and freeze away the aching pain in my lower back in the cold plunge.

    My show partner TJ and I finally moved into our crew cabins. It was a long day of hauling around suitcases and tracking down someone to unlock our doors but we made it. There is a whole city down here and having the safety of your own room is absolutely key to peace of mind.

    This hidden city includes a crew office, medical center, mess hall, laundry room, dressing rooms, gyms, bars, smoking room, garbage room, a botanical closet for the horticulturalist and even a weapons closet. Not to mention all the food storage rooms and freezers, the engine control room, the ballast tanks, water desalination center and all the other places I have never set foot in my life (I did get invited to a couple secret parties in the engineer’s workshop a couple times but you didn’t hear that from me).

    Amidst all this, my cabin is my sanctuary. I decorate it the second I get inside. For me decorating means using magnets to cover all of the hospitalesque white walls with huge colorful scarves creating a kind of bohemian wall paper. I have a large room (relatively speaking), a full sized bed, two portholes, closets, a desk and my very own bathroom. This sounds luxurious (and for ship life, it really is) but don’t get it twisted, we’re talking about a room that the Kardashians would consider the size of a very small walk in closet.

    My most valuable perk are the portholes. Living by the movement of the sun and waking to natural light is essential for my mental health and for it I am grateful. Few crew have them.

    All operational crew areas are clean and sterile with uniform blue floors and shiny white walls. These arteries of the ship run absolutely everywhere, behind every wall, next to every staircase. It’s overwhelming and confusing at first, but you learn your way around quickly. Discovering the little shortcuts and hidden doors is an important hack to survival. Knowing how to slip through sailor areas because you aren’t wearing the right kind of shoes for the A1A or cutting across that crew stairwell to get to the accessible bathroom in the balcony of the nightclub can save a lot of time and energy. It helps to follow around a seasoned seafarer for your first few weeks to learn the ropes.

    Your peers are the lifeblood of your survival, without them you might as well be adrift at sea screaming for Wilson like Tom Hanks. I could do a whole post about social life below decks, and maybe I will, but for now here’s a brief overview.

    Let me start by saying that I am an anomaly. I’m 40, which makes me an outlier within entertainment where most of the performers are fresh out of college. They like to hang out in big groups and go together to beach clubs and restaurants on land and in gaggles to crew bar on emo night. People plan movie nights and watch parties and dance classes.

    There are so many group chats.

    Having friends and a social support network is important for morale. I participate in this lifestyle sparingly. I tend to collect 2-3 very close friends who are my ride or dies. These are the people I spend time with when I am not sleeping late or reading quietly on deck 7.

    Crew members usually form bonds with those they can relate easiest to, those from the same country or who work in the same department. Smokers end up being friends with smokers, dancers with dancers and drinkers… get fired. Romantic bonds build quickly and intensely and blow up just as fast. More on that later.

    The biggest side effect working on a ship has had on my life and the hardest to explain to those who don’t do it is the unbreakable change in my perception of time. I told myself I would do one contract. “One and Done” she said. And somehow three years have gone by and I’m still here.

    My friend Megs, a ship general manager and career seafarer explained it to me once. She said “Just wait, before you know it we’ll be sitting right back here eating pizza in my cabin and it will feel like we never left”. She was right, it’s like that every time.

    I go home and I relearn how to live like a normal person, I buy my own groceries and cook my own meals, I snuggle my cat and hustle for gigs, I trudge up and down the subway steps in the snow and feel superior for having lived in NYC for my entire adult life.

    Then BOOP suddenly I’m back in my crew cabin staring at the gold Paloma Picasso scarf I use to cover my TV and wonder which port is just outside my window. I’m stuck on this merry-go-round now and I don’t know how to get off. I’ve started longing for it when I’m home, the quiet moments to write and read and lift weights for free while exploring places like New Zealand, Namibia, Montenegro and Martinique.

    While the Sailors sit by the pool getting hammered on piña coladas and achieving their perfect 2nd degree sunburns, thousands of people are below them shuffling up and down hallways pushing carts full of wet towels and cold ice and hot pappardelle ragu.

    While Susan and Derek are getting that sunset selfie in the window of the steakhouse, Althea and Gabriel are washing dishes and shoving dry waste into the incinerator.

    Since mom and dad left the kids at home, they’re fucking on the balcony for an audience of fishes while the contortionist just pulled a muscle in his scapula and the entertainment director has to cancel the 10pm show.

    It’s two worlds on top of each other. Stranger Things has nothing on us.

    I recently went to visit a friend on their ship contract and I spent nine days as a sailor in my own cabin on deck nine. I will never do it again. I did not enjoy the experience of being on a ship without being crew. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was supposed to be working, that I was part of the upside down instead of one of the rubes. I was constantly annoyed that I couldn’t access the crew spaces I’m used to being able to hide away inside. The crew lifestyle has become normalized for me and I don’t want to be onboard unless I’m being paid to be there.

    I’ve tricked you all into thinking this is going to be a blog about working on a cruise ship, this post in particular was the amuse bouche. I hope I’ve lured you into a false sense of security because really soon I’m going to hit you with the heart wrenching existential crisis of it all. See you soon.

    *my company refers to passengers as “sailors”

  • Welcome to Ship Log Blog

    Life behind the scenes on a cruise ship

    This story was originally published to subscribers of Ship Log Blog on Substack. Get new posts by email at the link below:

    shiplogblog.substack.com

    Ahoy crew, welcome aboard!

    My name is Anna, but most people call me Boo. I work as a performer on a cruise ship. This has been my life for the past three years and I am about to embark on my fourth ship contract.

    I live at sea on contracts that last six months at a time. I exist in a double life between the strange floating world that most people only see for a week and my life of the last 22 years in New York City.

    I used to refer to my land life as my “real life” but the longer I’m at sea, the less either feel particularly real.

    This is Ship Log Blog.

    It’s where I write about what life is actually like behind the scenes at sea and how it feels to step back on land.

    The parts few people see.
    The parts you can never truly understand unless you live it.
    The parts that are funny, exciting, heart breaking, beautiful, lonely and surreal.

    Because working on a cruise ship is not a normal job.
    It’s a lifestyle that completely messes with your sense of time, relationships, sleep, geography, and self.

    One day you’re watching the sunset in the middle of the ocean.
    The next you’re trying to remember what country you’re in.
    You form intense friendships that last a contract and disappear at the gangway.
    You live in a tin can with thousands of people and still find ways to be completely alone.

    And somehow, you also become completely addicted to this life. That’s the part that surprised me the most.

    I started writing Ship Log Blog because friends and family kept asking the same questions:

    “What is it really like to work on a cruise ship?”
    “Aren’t you sad to leave home?”
    “Can you fuck the passengers?”

    The answer to that last one is no. The answers to all the others were too big and too complicated for small talk.

    So I started writing them down.

    Here, you’ll get stories about:

    • Crew life and the weird rules we live by
    • Ports around the world through crew eyes
    • The emotional whiplash of living half your life at sea and half on land
    • Relationships and what both distance and extreme closeness does to them
    • The funny, the absurd, and the unexpectedly profound moments that happen on board

    This isn’t a travel blog.

    This is a logbook from someone living at sea.

    If you’ve ever wondered what happens below deck, you’re in the right place. Except it’s not a Bravo show about a luxury yacht, it’s the diary of someone in the trenches struggling to find an empty washing machine in crew laundry on day six.

    I plan to write once a week, either straight from my favorite spot on deck 7 or from the in between moments on land when I’m trying to remember what “real life” means.

    If you’re new here, I’m really glad you found this corner of the internet.

    And if you’ve been reading Ship Log Blog on my website for a while, welcome to the next chapter. This is where the stories arrive first now.

    If you want to dig deep into the archives, check them out at http://www.shiplogblog.com

    Thanks for being here.

    Let’t set sail.

  • New Rules to live by

    Rule Number 1: Don’t fall in love with the fuckboy

    Here I am in Orlando, at rehearsal, about to start my fourth ship contract and instead of brainstorming my writing projects and saving all the cool coffee shops and vintage stores in google maps for my upcoming ports, I am bogged down by a foolishly broken heart. For the past year I have been romantically entangled with an emotionally avoidant Romeo. We spent the majority of 2025 in a long distance non committed unofficial sexy emotional situationship. He spent a week with me in NYC before leaving for his own ship contract. I decided to go visit him onboard during his first month at sea to show him the ropes and finally get dicked down on the balcony of a passenger cabin. After a passionate and intimate week together, I kissed him goodbye and then he jumped into bed with one of the women in his cast so quickly I’m surprised he didn’t get whiplash. Honestly the most embarrassing part is how much it hurt. As if I didn’t see this coming from an ocean away.

    After being single for the past 12 years and celibate for the past three, my heart had finally softened, my pussy swelled and my nervous system bonded to this man. Turns out I can’t make eye contact with you while you are inside of me for nine days straight and not get attached. The resulting crash out has been much more destabilizing than I could have imagined. It holds so much power because I genuinely care about him and I believe he cares about me too. But that’s not enough. I collided head first into the reality that I simply cannot do what I was trying to do. I can’t be in a “casual” relationship with someone who is still building their identity. I can’t deny what I truly want; connection, intimacy, passion and most of all devotion. Denying these truths is denying who I am and I shan’t do it anymore. I SHAN’T I SAY!

    I cut it off as quickly as a could, which in this case was about two weeks later, following an intense theatrical rehearsal and premier process in NYC (more on that later). I miss him. I miss talking to him everyday. I miss sharing thoughts and advice and loving support with someone I care for. Most notably, I miss the innocence and excitement I felt. Hoping and believing that our very genuine connection would lead to attachment, despite all his warnings to the contrary.

    Rule Number 2: When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

    I am proud that I’m honoring myself, listening to my intuition and breaking my generational trauma of codependence but I also hate it here. It felt so good to be seen by him, to feel sexy, desired, cared for. But it was all built on a foundation of uncertainty which was driving me batshit. I could write a novel of opinions about what happened between us but it’s not my business anymore. My job now is to remember that I don’t want someone who doesn’t want me, to let go, to move on and to not let my heart turn back into stone. It would be so cool if I could accomplish that before I leave Orlando so that I can step onboard next week in San Juan with a fresh sense of self. Lofty goals.

    Hey Boo, besides getting dicknotized, what have you been up to for the past seven months?? Good question, thank you for asking dear reader. First I would like to apologize for my long absence from this blog. I could have sworn I wrote a post after my last contract in July. I did not. So here’s a quick recap: I spent April in Vegas, May in NYC, June and July on the ship, attended a friend’s wedding in Greece, crashed with my high school bestie in Geneva, visited Harry in Edinburgh for the Fringe, did some hiking in the French alps, drove to Turin, spent the night in Orta San Giulio in Italy and then landed right back in Brooklyn in September.

    I wrote a one woman show. My visit to the Edinburgh Fringe was a fact finding mission; should I self produce my show here? The overwhelming answer to that question was a resounding hell no. Not yet. That is a financial risk I am not currently in the position to take. A beloved and trusted adviser and mentor told me: “The way to the fringe is to get cast in someone else’s show, go there on someone else’s dime, use your time to make connections, guest in variety shows and practice pitching your own stuff.” Her words to the goddess’s ears.

    Lo and behold. One month back in NYC, wondering what in the absolute fuck I was going to spend my winter doing, I got a text from a director I have worked with many times in the past. Someone I auditioned for 20 years ago and have done three different plays with including fringe festivals and an autobiographical one woman show that she wrote. She and her husband/co-producer took me to dinner and told me that after years of doing the North American fringe circuit, they are finally ready to go to Edinburgh and did I want to be in their play. Serendipity at it’s finest folks.

    I spent the fall and winter rehearsing for that play while also taking a writing class at NYU. The writing class was everything I hoped it would be and more, I would do it again in every timeline. I also spent this time barely making a living. My gigs have dwindled to the barest minimum and I had to live off my previous contract money. I did some production management for a producer I like, I took a marketing class, I got LASIK and I got really good at taking nudes. It helps to be creative when nurturing a long distance sexual liaison. Voice notes are fun. Damn I miss that part too.

    The man came to stay with me and I found I enjoyed navigating life next to him (uh oh), the holidays came and went, rehearsals ramped up, I visited the man at sea, my romantic fantasy came crashing down, rehearsal and tech week commenced while my nervous system shook like it was in a washing machine, I packed up all of my belongings, the show premiered, I squeezed my cat and then I got on a plane.

    The rehearsal process for the ship is different this time. TJ and I already know the show, we don’t need much work. We have understudies for the first time, so most of the work is them watching us and learning. I have finally come to the realization that this is my only source of income now. I have resisted the idea of coming back here over and over again but it looks like that is my path. There is not a lot of work in my field at the moment and I am very lucky to have this job. Over the past three years I have figured out how to lead two lives, six months at a time. I think I’ll be riding this wave for as long as it’s available to me.

    My contract will end on July 26th in Barcelona. We’re hitting 2 continents, 37 countries and doing a transatlantic crossing. As soon as I debark I’ll head straight to Scotland where I will join the team for our month long run with TheSpace UK in a 54 seat venue on The Royal Mile. We will run the show over zoom while I’m at sea to try to keep it fresh. When we are docked in NYC over the month of April I will get off the ship, go to rehearsal, run the show and then get back onboard. Talk about double life! While onboard I’ll be working on the short story I started in my writing class, workshopping my one woman show and developing a new tv project based very loosely on this blog. I am so grateful for this time to create art while putting money in my IRA and paying off my laser eye surgery. In September my best friend and I are going to Borneo to celebrate our 40th birthdays even though we’ll both be 41 by then.

    I promised a loyal reader I would blog once a month. I would like to transition this forum into one I engage with both on land and at sea. Help keep me honest.

    Rule Number 3: Don’t ever take the budget airline

    This rule needs no explanation.

  • Where do I even live?

    Welcome back sailors. I finished out my six weeks in April, told Angel not to have too much fun without me, and headed back to the big city. The night I arrived home, my dear friend Arthur who you may remember from previous contracts, was waiting for me at my apartment in Brooklyn. When the clock struck midnight I turned 40. The day of I had a very small, last minute party downstairs in Carrie’s apartment featuring 10 of my closest friends, Mediterranean tapas, a pillow pit, two cakes, many bottles of amaro and one large pizza. It was perfect. So far I love being 40. Friends who’d already done it tried to explain the freedom involved with the transition, but you really don’t get it until it happens. 

    Shortly after I crested that great big hill of life, I shipped off to Vegas for three weeks to work. Vegas is so weird. I was there at the perfect time of year, April, when it’s not too hot yet. In the middle of the summer it is hell’s front porch. Everything in Vegas happens in a casino. I hate casinos. But I like working so here we are. I split my time in Vegas between crashing with two different friends while I hosted a really fun variety show at a classic downtown hotel. I’ve said in the past that I would never take a full time contract and move to Vegas but time has taught me that I am not in a position to say no to any job that wants to pay me money to do the thing that I love. Do you know how low the cost of living is in Vegas compared to NYC? It’s absurd. I hate the highways and the cars and the tourists and the dry, dry dryness but I would absolutely take a long term contract there if someone offered. No one IS offering mind you but the point remains.

    Back in New York I found myself in the position of having houseguest after houseguest. I never really had a moment to myself. I presented a precious, personal work in progress at a much anticipated art salon of creatives for a production company that I respect and have the privilege to collaborate with. It was powerful and informative and gave me creative fuel to move forward. More importantly it gave me a project to focus on during my next contract at sea.

    In the blink of an eye I’m back onboard. It’s amazing how adjusted I’m becoming to this lifestyle. Shocking really. I don’t want to use the word “comfortable” because that would be overstating it, but at ease. Except when I’m not. I’m currently writing this from the floor of a rarely used staircase in the theater because it’s raining outside and the passengers are boarding and the chair in my cabin is too hard. Whatareyagunnado? The fact that I am once again only doing six weeks here instead of the full six months makes a huge difference. In total this current little dance with Poseidon will equate to one half contract, three months total. Barely a blip.

    What’s the difference? How did I finally gain this ease of life as a cog in the corporate ocean going machine? I acquiesced. It’s as simple as that. To anyone who’s ever acquiesced to anything you know that it’s not actually simple at all but heart wrenching and very slow. But I did it. I accepted the reality of my situation. I AM a mere cog in a giant floating machine. I keep my head down, I follow the rules, I do my job well and I continue to have the privilege of taking advantage of this corporate money to work on my own personal projects while getting paid. I don’t need to have too much fun, I don’t need to fall in love or get laid or make friends. I’m here to make money, create art and build muscle. That’s it. And considering the state of the world, I am LUCKY for it.

    I’m in New York so seldom these last few years it barely feels like mine anymore. Being at my apartment feels like being on vacation. It’s weird. It’s shaking up my sense of self. Am I still a New Yorker? My home is there and some of my most chosen people, the gigs and venues where I cut my teeth and became the performer I am, my cat… But my work isn’t there, and for the most part neither is my body or my mind. So where do I live? Is this the beginning of the transition out? If so where am I going? That’s my question for the ages. I’m always wondering where I’m going and I’ve never known the answer. This can be an uncomfortable way to live, but I’ve acquiesced to this too. I can never see the path in front of me because I am the path. The path stretches out behind me, not in front.

    I was supposed to spend all of August back in Vegas, but that show decided to take a hiatus for the summer months so I’m suddenly out of a job and homeless as my apartment is sublet until September. I’m attending a wedding in Greece as soon as I debark in July so I’ve decided to just stay in Europe. One of my best friends lives in Geneva and spends the summer with her family at their chateau in the French alps (insert laughing emoji here because I know how that sounds). My beloved Charlie is directing a show at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, an event I’ve always wanted to attend and hope to perform in next year, so I’ll be bopping off to Edinburgh for a bit. I’ll go visit Arthur at his new apartment in Manchester. There’s a producer in Germany I’d like to meet in person. I wrote a parody of “Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps” in five languages for the polyglots that I can pitch to cabarets in different countries. I’m really trying to make some fucking lemonade out of these lemons. I’ve always been the type of person to chose adventure over comfort. So here we go.

    Thank you for hanging on with me and this journey. It is looking very likely that I will do another full contract next year. The ship I have my eye on starts on a sexy Caribbean itinerary out of San Juan and then crosses the Atlantic to hang out in Spain and Italy for the summer before going into “dry dock” in Palermo. America is pushing me out like a splinter and I can’t fight the universe forever. I will keep my roots in NYC for as long as I can and will continue carrying you along with me in my Sicilian leather backpack for as long as you’ll have me. If you’re looking for more juicy ship gossip, stick around.

  • Adrift again

    I didn’t see It coming but I tripped and fell and now I’m back on the ship. Not the same ship but the same job. See, the person who was hired to do my same job here was fired just three weeks into her contract for having “inappropriate relations with a passenger” and the company asked me to come onboard to cover. They wanted me to stay for the remainder of the contract which I politely declined because I have other obligations, but I was able to cancel some gigs snd jump onboard for six weeks. Honestly my dream is a six week contract, if I could do it this way all the time I would do it a lot more often.

    I’m about halfway through that six weeks as I write this today while docked in the Bahamas. This ship has a very different itinerary from my last one. I’ve traded the beautiful ancient ports of the Med for the turquoise waters of the Caribbean. A downgrade for several reasons but still way better than the endless winter we are enduring in NYC. This ship is currently doing what is referred to as the dreaded 5/5/4. Meaning we do two five day cruises followed by a four day cruise and then do it all again. Our home port is Miami and we hit the same four or five ports over and over. Miami, Key West, Puerto Plata, Cozumel, Bimini, Repeat. I’m doing more work for the same amount of money, but let me tell you, it’s a better deal than I was getting back home.

    I told myself I wouldn’t do this again. I really thought I was done. When I first joined the ship two years ago, on my very first day I saw a crew member sitting in the mess hall wearing a t-shirt that said “It’s my last contract I swear” and I thought “Oh no, what have I gotten myself into?” One of my biggest concerns when initially leaving NYC for that long was that my regular gigs would learn to live without me, that I would be replaced. Everyone assured me that wouldn’t happen, but guess what? That is exactly what happened. Of course it did. Out of sight out of mind. If you love New York City you will miss her fiercely when you’re away, but she won’t even notice you’re gone. NYC goes on with or without you. When I got home from my last contract I was shocked to find how hard it was to get work. I spoke about it briefly in my last post, the situation is dire. I didn’t feel the love from my city or my industry. So I made the decision to let go of my self imposed narrative that it’s New York or nowhere. I had to open my mind to other options. Suddenly I was offered some short contracts hosting a show in Vegas. Then like a fog horn out of the darkness the ship called and I, a poor unsuspecting showbiz sailor, was pulled back in… hopefully not to my death.

    After being here for about a week the company asked me if I could come back in June and July and finish out this contract. Once again I had to decide if I wanted to cancel all my gigs back home. I told them I would only do it if they gave me a raise (bluffing) and It fucking worked. They said yes. So now I have to come back for seven weeks in June and July. I was feeling so defeated and heartbroken by all the professional rejection I was experiencing in the city and my therapist told me to listen to the “yeses” and ignore the “nos”. Good advice.

    I’m already suffering from the same frustrations that plagued me in the past. I’m hungry all the time and I’m sick of all the food. The days are endlessly repetitive. The pillows suck. Did I mention the food thing? Cause that one is really bugging me today. The biggest difference is I’m only here for six weeks! It’s almost over! Because of that nothing feels too serious. Additionally I could not give two fucks about making friends. I am madly in love with my cast mate TJ. He has also done two contracts so he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s a sweetheart who is currently in school to be an anesthesiologist so he’s got his own shit going on. We share meals and gossip and hugs and my friendship needs are met. There are quite a few people onboard I know from my last two contracts, far more than I expected, so the day I arrived I heard a lot of “welcome back!”. I did feel welcome. I’m also so excited I get to leave soon.

    My year is basically booked at this point. I’m here until April 6th, on April 7th I turn 40, then Vegas for three weeks, NYC in May to workshop a show I’m writing, on the ship June and July and then back to Vegas for all of August. I might bop around to visit some friends to celebrate my 40th year at some point. Greece, Mexico, Switzerland, etc. But then what? There are some circus companies in Germany that could use a great emcee, I just have to learn German. No problem! I like language! It’s time for me to think way outside the box if I want survive the devastating economic recession that is doubtlessly hurtling towards me at a million miles an hour. People much younger than I am have much stronger plans for their futures and it might finally be freaking me out a little bit. Time to finish that undergraduate degree bitch.

    Today in Bimini I went to the beach with some friends. I burned that spot on my back where I couldn’t reach with the sunscreen while floating in the crystal water. Later we rented a golf cart and drove around the island sampling all the different conch dishes. Tropical conch salad, raw conch with citrus and scotch bonnet hot sauce, conch fritters, crack conch, etc. Then I enjoyed an Aperol spritz at the back of the ship while we sailed away. My neck hurts from doing squats on the smith machine last week or maybe from the shitty pillows or maybe because I’m almost 40 and I probably have arthritis like my mom. Life is an endless swirling melange of the good, the bad, the messy and the unknown and I’m equally excited and terrified about tomorrow.

  • where is my deus ex machina?

    I kept thinking I would be able to wrap this contract up in a tidy bow once I got back to land. That I would step off the ship and go on a solo adventure to Scotland, and then somehow process my year long seafaring experience into a digestible nugget of insight about life. But damn if that hasn’t happened. I should know by now that nothing ever gets tied up in a tidy bow. This is when the greeks would send down Helios on a chariot to carry me away so that I never have to face the consequences of my actions.

    The “Senioritis” post may have had a few of you worried that I might jump ship before the end, but I held on. I was deep in some feelings in August, feelings of comparison and inadequacy and frustration. That month was rough. The charter was annoying to say the least, and my feelings at the time were valid, but it’s amazing how, just a few months later, looking back at that post I feel very little relation to where I was then. I had to let it all go in an instant and move back to who I am on my own. We did stop at some excellent ports while we crossed from Athens to the UK. My favorites were Catania, Barcelona, Palma, Lisbon and Bilbao. Once the charter ended, our cast replacements arrived and we spent one more week onboard for “handover” where we did our final show and watched the new cast do their first. I visited Amsterdam for the first time, a humiliating thing to do on a ship because the dutch DO NOT want cruise ships in their harbor. A protest group chained themselves to a lock in the river and nearly kept us from the port. I remember wishing I’d been standing with them.

    On August 30th I handed over my crew ID, stepped off the gangway in Portsmouth UK, hauled my giant suitcases to Heathrow, stored one, and then spent 10 days on a London/Scotland holiday to reacquaint myself with freedom. I stayed with a friend in London for the first three nights and I kept dreaming that I had to go back to the ship. Like maybe I was just having an overnight and I had to be back onboard by 2pm the next day. It wasn’t until I was on the train to Edinburgh that that feeling began to fade. After two nights at an apartment on The Royal Mile, I got behind the wheel of a rental car and drove (ON THE LEFT HAND SIDE) up into the highlands and finally began to feel free. Scotland is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, and for those of us with Scottish heritage, a place of legend. Although, if you are an American with Scottish ancestry, I do not recommend mentioning that to locals at the pub, they don’t like it. I was conceived on the train from London to Edinburgh 40 years ago, which is one reason I decided to take the journey. That particular story went over better for some reason.

    After an overnight in Inverness and a very chilly morning dip in Loch Ness, I came back to Edinburgh for one night and stayed at a 5 star hotel called Prestonfield House which is the fanciest thing I’ve ever done. I felt like I was in Downton Abbey. A few more days of hotels and airports and baggage claims and taxis and then suddenly I found myself standing in front of my brownstone on a perfect sunny September day in Brooklyn. My cat remembered me and my apartment wasn’t in as much disarray as I feared it might be. It took me a few weeks to get everything put away where it belongs. The gigs in NYC are drying up because the economy is shit. Costs are up, profits are down, budgets are being slashed, and as we’ve seen time and again, art always gets cut first. I’m not panicked, I have a little time to figure out how to survive. I’ve actually managed to scrounge up enough work to keep buying groceries without dipping into savings.

    But what’s next? I turned down the offer to go back onboard. After two back to back contracts, I qualified for a raise, but I just couldn’t do it. I’m not saying I never will but definitely not now. They wanted me back in January for a seven month contract. That’s too long and I’m not supposed to be a sailor for life. But what am I supposed to be? I’m back at a crossroads. It’s actually less of a crossroads and more of a pathway that’s hidden from me. I got worried the other day because I thought “Oh no, I can’t see the path!”. But then I remembered that I’ve never been able to see the path, it’s always been hidden. I just keep taking steps and somehow as soon as my foot comes down, the path is beneath it. I don’t know where it’s going, but as long as I’m moving it’s there.

    As the title of this blog may insinuate, I do not know what the ending is. I started this writing experiment to document my time onboard, but I’m not onboard anymore and I don’t really want to stop writing. I’ve given up some of the things that held me down in the past so I could make room for what’s to come. But I don’t know what comes next. As I write this from a cafe in Brooklyn enjoying an oat latte and a plant based BLT, I am languishing in the in between. At 39 years old, I can’t help but feel time slipping away from me. I have never so desperately wished the sky would crack open and a voice filled with authority would boom down and tell me what to do, or at least give me a deadline for that play I’ve been thinking about writing.

    I read a lot of novels about greek myths this year. I’ve always felt compelled by them, as many have. I once did a burlesque act as Persephone and my favorite new musical of the last 10 years is Hadestown. The novels I read this year included Ariadne, Elektra and Atalanta by Jennifer Saint and Circe by Madeline Miller. Of these I found the latter to be the most relatable. In this interpretation, Circe is an immortal sorceress/goddess/nymph who is exiled by her family to live a life of solitude alone on an island. I identified intimately to her descriptions of loneliness. She lives for thousands of years and is never able to master loneliness. When she does find love, she uses magic to transform herself into a mortal so she doesn’t have to watch her love grow old and die. I’ve always been ashamed to admit to being lonely as though it is a weakness of character, and although I haven’t quite lived for thousands of years, I’ve been feeling especially isolated lately. I don’t know how I’ll feel tomorrow, but today I feel like maybe I would give it all up, all my ambition, all my freedom, all my dreams, and trade it for the comfort of love and partnership.

    But that’s not how it works is it? There is no chariot coming to whisk me away, no booming voice from the sky with directions about what to do next. There’s no one to give me a deadline to finish that creative project that keeps rattling around my brain and there certainly isn’t a man or woman who will fall in love with me and magically make all my insecurities go away. It’s just me and the people I choose to share myself with. That friend who told me to stop wasting the precious time I have, the producer who believes in me and keeps hiring me, the collaborator who wants to work with me no matter what we’re working on, my parents who know me to my core. This community, while sometimes out of sight, is never out of mind, even when I forget they’re there. There may not always be a deus ex machina, but there is always a chorus to fill in the gaps.

    This blog is no longer at sea in a literal sense, but I will keep sailing forward none the less.

  • Senioritis

    Yo guys I cannot believe I am still on this fuckin boat. Yes, I called it a boat. That’s how you know the koolaid has run dry. I am just under a month away from the end of my contract. The regular summer season is over and tomorrow begins 20 days of a private charter that does not require my services. I am here, under contract, getting paid, to do nothing. I’m not a passenger, I’m not crew, I am a ghost haunting the passageways of this big ass vessel with no purpose other than to continue to exist. It is weird. This business is weird. Please don’t get me wrong, my intention is not to complain. I am currently on a paid vacation traveling to some of the most beautiful places in the Mediterranean for free. I am also ready to go home. Both things are true. I remember this feeling well, the same thing happened last year. I must eat but no bite of food available to me is of interest. I must sleep but my once cozy cabin now feels like a high end prison cell. I must work but there is no job to be done.

    I mentioned once before that my job here is hosting a show. There are two of us in this show, myself and Harry, my “glamorous assistant”. The show essentially turns a traditional gameshow on it’s head by having a woman as the lead and a flamboyant man as the assistant. It is written as a classic comedy double act in which I play the straight man and Harry plays the clown. The creator of this show warned me that everyone always loves the clown and forgets the straight man. She said “people will love him more than you, it’s written that way. This will bother you and when it does, call me.” She was right, it did bother me at first, and I did call her and she helped me through it. The love for Harry is scripted. Over and over I say “Don’t you just love Harry? Isn’t he great? Give it up for Harry!” Meanwhile I’m the bad guy who yells at them and takes away their points. I got used to it. I knew I was good at my job. But recently something happened that pulled at the thread of this delicate sweater (I am the sweater).

    Ninety percent of the time, when people approach us to comment on the show they say “OMG look it’s HARRY! We LOVE you! You are so funny and talented and amazing!!!” Then sometimes they realize I’m there and say “You’re good too”, but mostly they say “Nice boobs.” This used to make me laugh. I do have great boobs. My stage name is a play on the word boobs because I tried early on in my burlesque career to get ahead of it. To call attention to the thing before anyone else could. It didn’t work.

    After our last show, a woman approached us with tears running down her face. She wanted to hug us and tell us that she was on vacation with her husband for the first time in 20 years and that she never gets a break because she has disabled children at home. She told us she had just had the best 45 minutes of her life. She hadn’t laughed that hard or had so much fun in a very long time. Through tears she wanted to hug us and thank us for the joy and catharsis we had brought her. It was an amazing moment, a beautiful validation that artists seldom experience. Then she looked Harry right in the eyes and said “I’m obsessed with you. I want to leave my husband and marry you and have your babies”. Then she looked at me and said “and I wish I had your boobs.”

    It hurt. Something about this interaction, one that should have been so special, so sweet, so affirming, it pushed me over the edge. I hone my craft for 20 years, am hand selected to take this job, am a professional, delivering a script while improvising and interacting with the audience and nailing jokes and singing and dancing for an entire year, and over and over again I am reduced to “Great Tits”. This is not the first time this has happened nor will it be the last. I know I am not alone. I know this is a tale as old as time. My anger and frustration is most certainly being fueled by the novels of greek myths told from the perspective of women that I keep reading. Surely I’m on edge due to the chaotic tipping point my country teeters on. But I do not know what to do with this rage. I have never been great at dealing with my anger. I seem incapable of ever directing it towards any individual person, so it usually turns around on me. I know that is not a healthy path. But what to do with this existential fury? The only thing I can think is to funnel it into my work. Keep creating I tell myself. Keep making art and telling stories. Maybe someday someone will see me as someone who has value beyond this female shaped meat suit I ride.

    When I say there is no job to be done, that is not entirely true. I have no job duties to fulfill on board, but there is other work to do. My job as an artist is to speak the truth, my truth, no matter how small it sometimes feels. It’s why I write this blog, it’s why I press forward on my other writing and performing ventures, it’s why I stay open and present when I’m onstage. The world is wild. The American empire seems poised to fall. Things back home are precarious to say the least. One cannot live on an international floating resort for a year and not gain a different perspective on what it means to be a citizen of earth. There is a whole planet out here and no matter what they tell us, The US is not the center of it. I am untethered, so maybe it’s time for a change of setting. I have options, but whenever I think of leaving New York my heart aches. I am a New Yorker before I am an American, can I really abandon my home? My family and friends? Is there a line that could be crossed that will finally push me away? Is it Trump being reelected? Is it a nationwide abortion ban? How many more war crimes can my country finance before I decide to divest? I don’t know. NYC has been my home for 20 years and is an unending source of inspiration for me as a creator. Would I be able to replicate that somewhere else?

    My best friend is moving out of the home we share together to move in with her boyfriend. I’ve given up my job and stable source of income for the past five years. I’ve been gone so long I’m not sure any of my regular gigs in New York need me anymore. My future is unclear and I don’t see the path ahead of me, it could go anywhere. I’m not scared, I don’t fear change, I have started over many times. Change is exciting and hard moments are what spur development. This is the realest senioritis I’ve had since I was an actual senior in high school. This contract is coming to an end, I am ready for it, and something completely unknown lies ahead of me. The difference now is that I am a 39 year old women with two decades of life experience under my belt instead of an invincible eighteen year old girl with twinkly stars in her eyes. At eighteen I went to the wrong university and left after one semester. At nineteen I went to the wrong conservatory and left after one month. I had to do the wrong thing to know what was right. I have repeated that process many times, I’ve always been a trial by fire kind of bitch. Back then I was listening very hard to what other people told me I was supposed to do. These days I’ve become proficient at listening to myself. Let’s see what kind of difference that makes.

  • A (limited) Travel Guide

    I am not a professional traveler but maybe I should be. One of my personal heroes is Anthony Bourdain, I’m still fucking pissed that he’s dead. I deeply admire his authenticity, his cinematic vision, his writing and the way he honored the places he visited by trying to experience them below the surface. This blog is not about Anthony Bourdain, instead I want to share with you some of my favorite things that I like to do in the ports that we visit over and over again. Yes, I am on a ship, No, this is not the most authentic way to experience a new place and Yes, we only visit very touristy places, but I do my best to sniff out local experiences. When you visit the same place many times, even though we usually only have about a day, you get the opportunity to try different things without the pressure of missing out. I LOVE to travel alone and I refuse to go exploring in port with more than three other people. The times I’ve gotten caught up in groups of eight to twelve were hellish and I shall not let it happen again. I’m great at just wandering and listening to my heart as well as doing a little bit of research ahead of time and saving potential destinations on google maps. The star feature on google maps is my greatest travel companion.

    Dubrovnik

    Australia and New Zealand feel like a very long time ago. I didn’t spend nearly enough time there to be able to pick many favorites, but I can say with conviction that I loved Down Under very much and will certainly be returning. New Zealand in particular was a wildly special place. I have always loved Polynesian and Maori culture and to get to see it up close was nourishing. Some favorite spots in NZ include Tauranga, Auckland, Wellington and the fjordlands. I loved pretty much every port in Australia including the big ones, Melbourne and Sydney as well as the littlest one, Eden. Hobart was amazing and already has it’s own post and my surprise favorite was Freemantle on the west coast. The food in Australia really is the best I’ve ever had and I don’t know how they do it. When we did the big repo we didn’t have very much time in any port but my number one favorite stop along the journey, much to my surprise, was Walvis Bay Namibia. A small group of us went four wheeling in the dunes and I haven’t laughed and gasped with childlike wonder so many times in one day in a very long time. Another place I fell deeply in love with was Malta and I low key think I might try to move there one day.

    New Zealand fjordlands
    Sydney
    Namibia
    Malta

    Now I’ll move into a territory where I can speak from a small amount of experience. This ship does two itineraries on repeat during the summer season. One is in the Aegean and the other is in the Adriatic, both sharing a home port of Athens. These are the same itineraries we did last year so I now have quite a few visits to each of these places under my belt. Let’s get into it.

    Athens. The ship docks in Pireaus, the ancient port of Athens which lies about twenty minutes south of the city center. Anyone who has ever visited the Greek islands (unless you have a private jet or something) has traveled through Pireaus. I am sitting on the ship in Piraeus as I type this. It’s hot as fuck in the summer, almost 100 degrees today. Pireaus is it’s own small city with an almost entirely seafaring infrastructure. I don’t always get off the ship when we are here. It’s sometimes really nice to take advantage of the four hours every week after the debarking passengers have left, before the new passengers come on when the ship is almost quiet. The gym is empty! What a treat. But when I DO decide to get off I have a couple favorite things to do. Sometimes I take a cab into the city center for lunch and shopping. Athens is awesome. It’s so so old. Ancient ruins litter the streets. It’s also pretty clean and safe. This is coming from a New Yorker so I guess that’s relative. They have some excellent bars and restaurants including a cocktail bar called “The Clumsies” that is on the top 50 bars in the world list and an inconspicuous little restaurant called “Six Dogs” that has a beautiful courtyard and excellent vibes. If you’re partying overnight, the club scene is wild and I recommend a gay club called “Shamone” where we danced into the wee hours of the morning during ramp up last year. When I stay in Pireaus I like to have lunch at a small family restaurant called “Margaro” which serves only three things: fried local mullet, fried shrimp and greek salad, all prepared to perfection. I also like to visit local favorite “Starfish restaurant” which was recommended to me by a taxi driver named Dimitri and does not disappoint.

    Santorini. I will be honest with you, Santorini is WAY overrated. I haven’t tried to get off the ship in Santorini once this entire contract. I got off twice last year. Arriving in Santorini on a cruise ship is a nightmare. There is no port that can accommodate a large ship so you must tender to land at the port of Thira and then take a cable car up to the top of the cliff where the town is. There are no restrictions on how many ships can be in Santorini at a time so sometimes there are four or five ships anchored at the same time. This makes the wait for the tender boats and the cable car unimaginably long. People stand for hours in the sun just waiting in line. You can opt to walk up the zigzagging foot path in the blistering heat next to the abused donkeys who are sweating and pissing and shitting the whole way. Once you finally get to the top you will find what is essentially a giant shopping mall and hundreds of other tourists trying to take the same photo for their instagram. It’s a dystopian hellscape and there is nothing authentic about it. It’s a tourist trap. I came to Santorini once 20 years ago right after I graduated from high school with my best friend and it MAY have been more authentic then but I just remember it being a beautiful place with lots of expensive resorts. It IS a beautiful place. The history and the geography are incredibly unique. The one time I enjoyed it was the very first time we went last year. I hiked to an ancient castle called Skaros and climbed to the very top. It was hard and scary and dangerous and forbidden and fun. I did it alone. There is another town on the far end of Santorini called “Oia” that is the home to all of the iconic blue domed churches you’ve seen on the internet. I still haven’t bothered to visit it. My favorite thing to do in Santorini is stay on the ship and look up at all the layers of rock that were blown out of the ocean thousands of years ago when the volcano exploded and destroyed Akrotiri. If you decide to visit Santorini, sail through the caldera on a sailboat and wave.

    Skaros Castle Santorini

    Rhodes. I love Rhodes. In general there is only one ship in port per day so it doesn’t get completely saturated with tourists. The port is situated right next to the historic old town which is right next to the new town so you don’t have to walk far to get to pretty much anything you might want. It’s a helpful port when you live on the ship because there are pharmacies and barbershops and makeup stores for any human needs a crew member might have. The port is also the former site of The Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The beach is beautiful and it’s right there. I tend to rent a beach chair at a place called “Elli beach club” if I feel like having a beach day. My favorite restaurant in old town is called “Island Lipsi” also known as “Nikki’s Place” and serves perfect traditional greek food in a very old building that plays traditional greek songs like Zorba the greek that make me want to smash my plate on the floor. If you rent a car or take a bus about 30 minutes south of the old town you can visit an ethereal place called “Kalithea Springs”. It’s the kind of picturesque oasis where people like to get married. It’s a beautiful little park by the water and the site of where I scuba dived for the first time last year. I’ve always been able to breathe underwater in my dreams so doing it for real was a living fantasy (Don’t be like me and scuba dive when you’re recovering from a sinus infection). In the center of the island is a butterfly forest. You read that correctly. I have been wanting to go to this butterfly forest since last year but there is always some reason I don’t. I’m running out of time. One of my key memories in Rhodes was two weeks ago when I finally got both my nipples pierced after lusting after it for years. It was extremely worth it, my tiddies look so cool.

    Kalithea Springs Rhodes

    Bodrum. Turkiye. This place is what some (me) might describe as “way too fucking hot”. Bodrum is popular for shopping, specifically for designer fakes. Get all the fake Chanel and Versace and Marc Jacobs and Dior your little heart desires. It’s the kind of place that funnels everyone through the same narrow channel and then harasses them into buying things. You must haggle. This kind of shopping isn’t really my jam so I don’t tend to walk through. The very first time we went to Bodrum I walked deep into town and went to the local market and smelled all the spices and teas and sampled Turkish delight. If you find yourself in town when the market is open I recommend it. My favorite thing to do in Bodrum and the only reason I tend to get off the ship is when a big group of us rent a boat for the day from a company called “Angel Bodrum”. We stock up on snacks and walk to the pier where all the small boats are docked and then sail away. We spend the whole day lounging and jumping in the water and swimming and napping and reading and getting drunk and it is a delight. It’s days like this that make you feel like you have the coolest job in the world that is actually just getting paid to be on vacation. Harry’s favorite thing to do in Bodrum last year was to go to the Turkish hammam and steamed and scrubbed. Last time we were in port I discovered a small local beach right next to the port that has lounge chairs and umbrellas and it will be my new go to whenever we are there.

    Bodrum boat days

    Mykonos. Aka Greece for millionaires and millionaire wannabes. Mostly wannabes. When I visited Mykonos in 2003 it was known as the gay island and the party island. It is still very much those things but now in addition it is exploitatively expensive. This is not by accident. The powers that be want it to be prohibitively exclusive. However, with a little forethought, it is possible to enjoy Mykonos for what it is, a beautiful sun drenched paradise. Mykonos is for swimming and there is no shortage of places to do it. Sometimes when I want to be alone and keep it simple, I go to what I call my “shitty little town beach” as it has no name and no label on the map. It’s not pretty or romantic but it has a concrete pier that sticks out into the most perfect blue green water and it’s where the locals seem to like to hang out. When I want to make a whole day of it, I’ll take the local bus twenty minutes to Elia beach for three euros and walk down to the nude gay cruising area. I’ll find a little place hidden away in the rocks, get naked, eat a sandwich and swim for hours. In old town there is a classic Mykonoan restaurant called “To Maereio” which I am hesitant to tell you about because it’s already hard enough to get a table. I usually get there 15 minutes before they open to make sure I get one of the six tables they have inside. The three people who run the place are family and the food tastes like it was made by someones grandmother because it probably was. Get the special. Mykonos old town has an outdoor movie theater called “Cinemanto” that is so romantic and adorable and basically a secret garden. Last year we all saw Barbie there on opening weekend. On the north of the island there is a tiny restaurant sitting alone on it’s own beach called “Kikis” that I have not yet visited but I am dying to, another thing I am running out of time to do. Night time is party time and the reason most people go to Mykonos. The clubs get wild. “Jackie O’s” is a famous gay bar and will always live in my memory as the place where I first did poppers. “Lola Bar” is my favorite cocktail bar in town. It’s very burlesque and makes excellent drinks and the owner Dimitri loves me. Everyone in Greece is named Dimitri. Mykonos is the only port where we have an overnight and there is something about being free from the confines and rules of the ship at night that really feeds my soul, even if I can’t be on drugs like everyone else.

    Mykonos

    Split. Now we’re in the Adriatic. Croatia is my favorite country we visit. It is so beautiful. The color of the water is like heroin to me, it does something indescribable to my brain. The internet says it’s some of the cleanest water in the world and I can feel a calmness in my belly just thinking about it. Split is a very cool town and on the top of the list of places I will revisit when I take a proper vacation there. The ship docks within an easy walking distance of the old town which was originally a Roman castle. There is a local beach just on the other side of a hill from the ship that is like a huge seawater bathtub. It’s not fancy but it does the trick. I love watching the locals play “picigin”, a ball game meant to be played in shallow water and involves a lot of dramatic leaping. I tend to be a creature of habit so I have a few things I do in Split over and over. First, there is a tea and spices shop called “Harissa” that is full of large tins of loose tea that you can open and smell and I love bringing new people there. It is very pleasant to have nice tea in my cabin and it’s a wonderful gift to bring back to loved ones. Next there is an incredible restaurant called “Villa Spiza” that I credit The New York Times article ’36 hours in Split’ for helping me find. It is tiny and another treasured venue where I wait outside 15 minutes before they open in order to get a table. They don’t have a freezer on premises so everything they have is fresh. The pasta is amazing. Split is a lovely town with narrow winding roads that is fun to get lost in. There is a beautiful park with a fountain that I love to lay in the grass and read in. Twice in Split I have been with a group that rented a boat from a company called “Rent a Boat Split” and those have been some top notch days. Ten of us on a little speed boat flying away from town and hopping from one perfect little beach/cove/cave/lagoon to the next. Last week in Split I had the opportunity to be a crew “escort” for a ship sponsored excursion with Megs’ friend Brett and we went white water rafting on the Cetina River. When I say that this experience made me want to run away and live in the woods… I am exaggerating but I did think about it. I only hope that when I get home I can try to replicate with paint the abundance of varieties of green I saw under the water.

    Split

    Dubrovnik. Oh to have been able to visit this place 20 years ago before the rest of the world discovered it, and by the rest of the world I mean fucking HBO. Dubrovnik is an incredible, breathtaking, interesting old city and the set location of “Kings Landing” in Game of Thrones. Thus it has been completely ruined by fanatical tourists. It’s difficult to explain exactly why but this is the one spot where the abundance of tourists really bothers me. It’s not all bad, happily I have found a Dubrovnik hack. This is a secret I have viciously gate kept from my fellow crew members because I do not want to share it. However my contract is ending soon so here goes. The secret to Dubrovnik is Lokrum Island. Lokrum is a small island less than 5km from old town. One must simply push their way through town from the Pile Gate, down the main road, out the back gate to the old port and buy a 27 euro ticket onto the ferry. The ferry takes ten minutes and then there you are, in paradise. Lokrum Island has a fascinating history and I highly recommend you read about it. Here let me help you: www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lokrum. It’s cursed ya’ll. There are trees and tidal pools and wild peacocks and an old ass monastery with a restaurant in the courtyard and a nude bathing area with a big cave and it is pretty much the only thing I ever want to do when in town. I can’t take credit for finding it, Harry did when doing his diligent research of nude beaches last year. Harry and Oliver and l love this place above all others. Oliver likes it because he’s a free diver and he can swim really deep down into the ravines. We often stop on our way to Lokrum at a fast food spot in town called “Holy Burek” and buy what we affectionately call “meat sticks”, a local Balkan dish made of filo dough wrapped around chicken or cheese or whatever. We eat our meat sticks on the ferry beaming with joy and pride for how very smart and cool we are. One other Dubrovnik tradition is something I resisted last year because of the insane price but did do once this contract before the busy season began and that is to “walk the wall”. Dubrovnik old town is completely surrounded by an old castle wall that one can pay 35 (!) euros to climb and walk the perimeter. It is honestly an excellent way to see the whole town. But if you only have one day in Dubrovnik, don’t waste it on the wall or a stupid Game of Thrones tour, go visit the ghosts on Lokrum.

    Lokrum Island

    Kotor. You and I are both going to be disappointed by this one. I have not done right by Kotor. Montenegro is probably the most beautiful place we sail to. To get to the port of Kotor, we sail for an hour from the sea through a series of narrow bays and channels surrounded on all sides by staggering mountains. It’s incredible. I am constantly in awe of how amazing the earth is. However the actual old town of Kotor just doesn’t do it for me. It’s not fair really cause I never gave it a shot. It’s another very old town with walls and narrow passageways and cats and too many tourists. When lots of ships are in at the same time there are just too many fucking people in a very tiny space. I hate to admit it but the landscape is SO stunning, the best place to see it really is from the water. So most of the time I stay onboard and sit on deck 7 and stare up at the mountains with glistening little tears in my eyes. There is a hike up an ancient wall that people love to do, I haven’t done it. There is a cable car that goes to the top of the mountain that has a little gravity powered train track roller coaster thing that looks amazing, I haven’t done that either. When my best friend Jenny came onboard I sent her and her boyfriend to rent kayaks because that seems like the best thing to do there. They had THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES. It was both of their favorite days of the whole week. There is a great little Thai massage parlor in town that I frequented last year until I realized I don’t really love Thai massage. I am visiting Kotor one more time before this contract ends so I have one more chance to not fuck this up. The internet showed me a place called “Underwater Wine Kraken Kotor” that is a floating wine bar which stores its wine underwater. It’s about a 15 minute drive from the old town and requires being picked up in a boat to get there. In two weeks time, I plan to go to this place with my new ship friend Jamie. I will report back if this all works out.

    UPDATE: On my final visit to Kotor, I did make right by the place. We didn’t make it to the underwater floating wine bar thing, BUT I did get myself signed up as the escort for a ship excursion to the cable car that goes to the tippy top of one of the mountains. This was breathtaking. Once at the top, there is a funicular roller coaster thing that winds along the top of the mountain overlooking the whole bay of Kotor all the way to the ocean. I’ll never forget it. I would love to return to explore more of this beautiful tiny country.

    Kotor

    Corfu. Yes please. More Corfu. My favorite Greek island. It’s not in the Adriatic, it’s technically in the Ionian Sea and while it is a part of Greece, it kinda feels like Italy. That’s probably why I love it so much. I told Jenny that if she buys a house in Corfu I would buy the boat. The Ionian islands are the only islands in Greece that were never ruled by the Ottoman Empire, so Corfu never got those Turkish white washed buildings you associate with Greece. It was also able to maintain a history of artists and artisans more easily than its Aegean siblings. Corfu has a lovely old town that I love getting lost in. Every single person I meet there is so warm and kind and remembers me every time I come back. I feel at home there. My days alone wandering Corfu are incredibly cathartic. My first time there I was wandering past a jewelry shop and I almost continued by but I felt compelled by the universe to go in. That is how I met Pavlos, a man who I certainly know from a previous life. He is a silversmith and jeweler whom I have spent a fortune on because he makes beautiful jewelry and sells it to me at very generous prices. Probably because we are soulmates or were soulmates or something about his jewelry has healing properties for me. Pavlos sees right into me. I bring everyone to meet him including my mom whom he gifted a long chain necklace to match one of mine. I do have a favorite restaurant in Corfu that I visit every time. It’s called “Elia” and it is a traditional Greek restaurant that makes all the standard Greek things perfectly. They also have a really great vibe and often gift me a limoncello at the end of my meal. The best gelato is from “Papagiorgis” and is really the only place I bother to get gelato in any port. There is a little spot where the town meets the water that I refer to as “the town beach” but is actually called “Faliraki Square”. I come here after my wanderings and swim in the perfect clear water next to the ancient fortress and try to figure out how I deserve such a cool life. There is one unchecked box on my Corfu to do list and that is Paleokastritsa Beach. It is said to be one of the beach beaches in Greece and I don’t want to miss it. Corfu is a big island and I have only seen one tiny portion of it, but as soon as Jenny buys that house and I get that boat I’ll be able to check out the rest.

    UPDATE: On my final visit to Corfu, I DID make it to Paleokastritsa! My friend Coen and I went to Akron Beach Club and spent the day drinking and swimming and lounging and it was awesome. I will be returning to Corfu.

    Corfù

    That’s it. That’s how I’ve spent the last two summers of my life. At the beginning of this coming August we will be leaving Athens and repositioning to our next home port of Portsmouth in the UK. During that repo, the ship is being chartered by an outside company for two back to back voyages. That company generally provides its own entertainment and is not interested in having our show which means I will have exactly 20 days off while we move through the Mediterranean stopping at some of the absolute best ports one can imagine. Malta, Catania, Naples, Ajaccio, Majorca, Barcelona, Malaga, Cadiz and Lisbon, to name just a few. Once in Portsmouth we will do two more short trips, one to Amsterdam and one to Zeebrugge, before our contract is over. After that I’m taking ten days to visit Scotland for the first time, the land of my ancestors. My mom will be joining me and we’ve got a pretty cute little trip to Edinburgh and the highlands planned. By the time I get back to NYC I will have visited 20 countries since my contract began in March. Pretty soon I’ll have to make a new list.