Masks on and off ship

 

Even before I posted my last blog (about September), a lot changed on the ship, too much to still put it in that last blog. That's why I now have an extra long blog with newsupdates. Like I said last month, I've tried to put some more pictures in there this time. Enjoy reading!

Restrictions on ship
On the 28th of September the crew was called to come together in a mandatory meeting. In the hour that followed, we heard about what we'd been trying to postpone as long as possible...
Because the ship is currently in maintenance, we have local contractors working on board during the week (and sometimes the weekend too). These people live on the island and have therefore always been at risk to be exposed to and then expose our crew to COVID. To keep the risk as low as we could, we always made sure to wear masks and keep a safe distance when we were around contractors. At the end of September we were told that one of the contractors had tested positive for covid and that changed a lot for us on the ship. Because of the timing, there was a very small chance any of us had been exposed to the virus, but leadership on board still decided to make sure the crew would stay safe. In this unplanned meeting, we were told that we would start with mask wearing and keeping distance on ship the next morning. That evening, we hugged a lot and me and some other friends stayed up until midnight, to enjoy our freedom as much as possible.

Now we are a month further down the line and the restrictions are still in place. Actually, we don't think they will be eased until there's a vaccine for the virus. So what does life on board look like these days? Simply said, we wear masks and try to keep two meters distance from others when possible. But it's not that simple when you live on a ship with 150 people. The masks are the easiest part. You always wear one when you're not in your cabin, or if someone comes to visit your cabin. Another exception is when you're physically eating or drinking. Now you may think: isn't eating and drinking always physical? Yes it is, but if you're holding a cup of tea and not actually taking a sip, you have to keep up your mask. Other than that, you can take it off outside on ship, as long as you are distanced from people and you're not in a group of more than ten people.
The distancing is a bit more difficult, especially since most of our hallways aren't even two meters wide. With this we are therefore not as strict. In the dining room, for example, it's impossible to keep a distance. Instead, they took out half of the chairs, so now you're always sitting diagonally from other people. In other places on the ship I notice we are more distanced then before, but we almost never reach the two meters.

Work in the dining room

A week after we started with the restrictions, I changed departments. They needed more people in the dining room and I wanted to switch, because the work in hospitality was a bit too chaotic for me, so this was a good opportunity for me. Around that time we also changed the serving system in the dining room. We now serve the food, where all crew could serve themselves before. Especially in the beginning everyone had to get used to it, the crew as well as the dining room crew, but I really like to serve people their food. After a while you get to know what and how much everyone likes to eat. This doesn't only make the line go faster (in the beginning that would be over half an hour sometimes), but people are also very grateful if you can serve them exactly what they want, without having to ask too much. Some people express that appreciation very clearly and that makes my job a really gratifying one. In my eyes these are a few seconds that I can use to invest in every crewmember to make their day a bit better.
Like every department, in the dining room too we are with just enough people to get the work done, but it's not ideal. That makes that we have to work extra hard sometimes and the workdays can be quite intense. During the week, we start at 6 am to put everything out for breakfast. By the time we've put everything away and cleaned up, it's about 9/9.30 am. We then have some time off, until we start our lunch shift at 11, which we finish around 2 pm. At 4 pm we start again and most often we finish at 7 pm. A workday is spread out over 13 hours and even though we have some time off in the middle, it is very intesive work, especially as we now serve the food. On the weekends we thankfully don't serve lunch. Instead people can pack their lunch at breakfast, which we also start a bit later then on weekdays. 
In the dining room we have two teams that alternate workdays. Team 1 works on Monday and Tuesday, team 2 on Wednesday and Thursday and team 1 works on Friday, Saturday and Sunday again. The next week this switches. This way, you always work two or three days, after which you're off for two or three days. This makes it a bit easier to keep having the energy to do the work. But what do we do with all that time off?

 

Shore leave!
Until about two weeks ago, we were quarantined with the whole ship. We could only walk on the dock (over a length of about 1,5 km). Other than that, we were on the ship and had to pass our time there. Now I'm not saying that life is very different now, or that the restrictions make life on board better, but because of those restrictions, we now have the possibility of shore leave. That means we can actually leave the port and enter the island of Tenerife! That's amazing, of course, but we're still not completely free. To see what is safe and possible in small steps, everything is very controlled. We can take one of the ship cars with four Mercy Shippers per car, on one of the following trips:
1. Go to one (or more) of three supermarkets in a close-by town.
2. Go for a one-hour mountaindrive.
3. Go to the beach and the hill next to it, which we can see from the ship.

By now, I've done all three of them, in this same order. After two months on board without seeing almost anyone that's not crew, it was quite strange to see other people in the supermarket. It was also really nice to see something other than the ship, but having three full shelves of different kind of yoghurts or jams is still weird if you're used to the ship's assortment.

The mountaindrive wasn't super special, but still nice to do. I always love looking around and seeing new things and it also was a good moment to catch up with the others in the car. On the ship you're always busy, and now we couldn't do much other than sitting still and looking out of the window. Above you can find some pictures from our drive!

Although I haven't visited the beach yet (I really dislike sand, so I'm not sure if I will go there), I did climb up the hill last Saturday. When I was in quarantine, I met Matt, who had arrived shortly after me. When we were walking up on deck 8 in the evening, we would see El Teide, the highest mountain of Tenerife and we spoke about how much fun it would be to go hiking, if ever we were allowed off ship. Matt left the ship last Sunday, and because we couldn't really go to the mountains to hike, we decided to hike the hill instead. With two other crewmembers we climbed up, just in time to see the sunset. The hill, Montaña Roja, extends abit from the island, so you have a beautiful view and can look quite far out. While the sun was setting on the ocean on one side, the moon rose on the other side. We hadn't really thought about the fact that we then had to walk down in the dark and that on some spots it was a bit steep or dangerous because of loose gravel. It took a while to find the car, but we made it back to the ship safely!

 

Of course there's a lot more to say about what all happened in the past month, but I think I've covered the most important parts. Like I said already, it was a bit long, but I hope you liked hearing from the Africa Mercy. Thank you for reading and until next month, which will already be my last update from the ship!