AQS Magazine, Ultimate Ship Tour

Some exciting news: Chris B. from American Quilters magazine called me and asked if they can keep my quilt "Five-Thirty A.M" a few days longer and photograph it for the AQ magazine. She doesn't know if they want to feature it as a pattern or if they want to put it as the final photo featured at the back of the magazine. Either way, I'm thrilled.


Also, I want to tell about my Ultimate Ship Tour, which I took on Friday. I was lotteried in as one of the 14 people on the ship that got to be on this tour. I had to pay $150 but it was way worth it. The tour took us all over the ship, into the places that passengers don't usually get to see.

We went backstage at the theater, saw the dressing rooms and the costume storage, and the cabins of the singers and dancers. They had so many costumes that they were stored on a sort of electric dry-cleaner rack that spiralled up 3 stories above the stage, they just pushed a button to spiral the dresses around and find the ones they wanted.

We toured the photography office (they print 10,000-15,000 8x10s on each cruise), and the printers office, where they gave each of us a thick personalized notepad with "Ultimate Ship Tour" and our names on each page.

We saw the galley (kitchen) and all the frozen food locker-rooms, the refrigerated locker-rooms, the holding rooms where they stored all the pounds of chopped vegetables they had chopped for the next meal, the humongous soup pots, the holding ovens, the big grills. It was all electric, because of the danger of fire. The ceiling, floors, walls were all steel.

Everything was absolutely clean, not a smudge or piece of dirt anywhere. I was impressed. They served each of us a delicious virgin cocktail and some fancy cookies, and we got our picture taken with the chef, Loreto Bembo, and the ships purser, Georgianna ____.

They have 184 cooks and 64 galley cleaners.

The laundry was almost the best part. They had gigantic tablecloth machines, two men put in the two corners of a wet tablecloth, it went into the presser and it got pressed dry, and then the machine folded it and it came out a little folded square. The same with towels, washcloths, napkins, each had their special machine that folded them.

There were washing machines that washed 350 towels at once, and it only took 5 minutes.

We went in the engineer room, and saw all the computers and video cameras showing the engine rooms and funnels, etc. We didn't actually get to go where the engines were. They told us how the heat from the ships engines is used to distill the water for the ship. They don't load water onto the ship, all the water is distilled. The ship can distill 30 tons of water per hour from salt water. I drank the water all week and it tasted great.

They told us that the ship weighs 70,000 tons, and to go from full speed to stopping takes 5 minutes and 1.5 miles, changing engines from full steam ahead to full astern.

Then for our last stop, we got to visit the bridge and talk to the 2nd officer and the captain and have our pictures taken there, while they all had champagne and I just had more fancy cookies. The bridge looked just like Star Trek except instead of stars there was a window 50 meters across with an ocean to look at. Lazy-boy type chairs and lots of computers and instrument panels. They had double back-up on every system, but they also had a regular old style sextant and compass, etc, in case everything broke at once. All the officers lived in cabins right next door, within 20 feet of the bridge, in case of an emergency they can all get there in about 1 minute.

That was about the best $150 I ever spent, I LOVE seeing behind the scenes.

Oh, I also got a fluffy embroidered "Sapphire Princess" bathrobe and a chef's uniform and the photos included for the price.