16 hour days

I’m on my way back to Cairns, after another 4 days on Reef Encounter, my big boat. The first two days I wrote about in my last post I’ve been to the boat as a passenger, this time as a hostie, or better: cheap human resource. Right now I think maybe I should live on a diving boat, every time I’m staying on board of one for some days it breaks my heart to get off.

The offer is: you work on the boat and get accommodation, food and diving for free. Good deal! Because you don’t spend any money and you safe the money you normally spend on your diving, which is not the cheapest hobby.

The day starts at 5:30h, washing glasses from the last night, ordering the sofas, setting the tables for breakfast, prepare cereals, juices, bread, spreads etc for later. Empty bins, clean toilet, start laundry cycle, clean outside windows of the boat… At 6ish the first passengers show up to have a coffee before the early morning dive, at 6:30h everyone goes diving (that’s a guaranteed one). After the dive serving breakfast, than having breakfast and cleaning breakfast, means: washing all dishes, cleaning the saloon, drying dishes, ordering everything. Good fun though, the boys put on good music and we had some sweet kitchen parties.

Talking about kitchens: I have to admit that you can’t get the quality manager out of the girl. 6 years of audits, normalization, indicators and HACCP (hazard analysis critical control point) made me laugh quite a bit about the conditions we worked in. And so did the risk prevention (not existing).

Anyway… after breakfast preparations, first dive at 6.30, the early morning dive. It is my favorite dive, everything is waking up, during the dive it’s getting brighter and the colors and life of the reef is changing. And it is a beautiful way to wake up.

Diving in Queensland is extremely controlled, I’ve never seen so many restrictions, 40minutes maximum, and the night dive is limited to 30minutes and 10meters. As hosties we were  not allowed to dive with computer, we had to follow the SSI tables which are even more conservative than the PADI tables. If you burn your tables you’re not allowed to dive for 24h. It happened, Marius failed by 0,6m one day. At the end of the day it’s not too difficult, dive sites are not as deep, the deepest dive I’ve done these days was 18 and something meters.

The dives are the only free time you have as a hostie on Reef Encounter. 40minutes of relax under the water, which actually tires you as well. But it doesn’t matter, I just kept going. All day long. Cleaning rooms, doing laundry, cleaning the boat, more laundry, setting tables, serving food, cleaning dishes, cleaning the kitchen, chopping mushrooms, peeling onions, cleaning again and again and again…..

We were lucky that we could enjoy many dives these days, because it depends on the amount of work to do.  The first day I did 2 (could have done 3, but I was too tired), the second day 4 dives, the third 3 and the last day only one.

Let’s go on with the schedule: after the dive it’s breakfast time, means: eat quickly and clean everything afterwards. I stayed in the kitchen some days to help out a bit. I can’t help but compare my former work and organization with the boat. During my stay on the boat we were round about 50people eating lunch (passengers who came on the boat in the morning and the ones who leave after lunch), Marius and Tobbe told me that yesterday they had 80 passengers eating, so 2 shifts. They have one cook on the boat and no helpers. And the kitchen is tiny, but he does an awesome job!

Pretty soon after the kitchen jobs the new passengers come on board, together with the food supplies, which have to be stored. And we had to show the passengers to their rooms. Other jobs are waiting too, refreshing rooms, laundry, cleaning stuff… With a bit of luck another dive at 10.30, after that lunch preparation, lunch serving, and same procedure as before.

In the afternoon the rooms of the departed passengers had to be changed. A dive break at 3.30pm.

And then: same procedure, dinner preparation.

Night dive at around 7pm after dinner and after the nightdive desert, the 4^th kitchen cleaning in the day.

It was exhausting work. We had sometimes 5minutes to sit down and just do nothing, but very rarely. Diving is tiring, so is the work. I faced my quality manager me a couple of times! The boat and schedules are pretty well organized, but there is a lot of improvement work to do. I got very upset one day with the sheets: We had 7 rooms to change; they are on 3 different floors. The sheets are supposed to be stored in every room, but most of the cupboards were empty, so I took the sheets from the wheelhouse where we were folding the linen and towels. Some of the sheets are marked with a D or S for double and single, but not all of them. It takes a lot of time then to find the fitting sheets, the wheelhouse is like the 4^th floor, the boat is moving all the time, I got smashed a couple of times by the cupboard doors, it is hot, I wanted to do an efficient job but couldn’t. I haven’t counted the times I went the stairs up and down to get all the fitting sheets and towels in the rooms. But I remember that I was really really glad to hear the 3.30pm dive call. After the dive everything was fine.

The hostie job is challenging. But I was very lucky to have 2 super hosties on my side to work with. I don’t want to imagine what it is when the co workers are not as good as mine were. We had 2 young girlies for 2 days working as hosties, but honestly: they didn’t do anything or at least not a lot. I know I’m very demanding when it comes to work, I like to work with compromised people who show interest in what they are doing. Even if it comes to basic jobs like we did on the boat.

Work motivation doesn’t come from money. In this special case what I got was dives. But I belonged to a team I liked and had a lot of fun. I worked harder than I did in my real job, it was physical work and I’m not used to it. I’m glad that I have a good fitness; otherwise I don’t know what would have happened. My legs were sore in the evening, but a strange kind of pain, too many hours without sitting down and too many days without exercising.

Maybe I was so sad because it is a long time that I’m not belonging anywhere, no friends, no group, no team, no work, not even a country. It feels good to belong somewhere. I loved these 4 long days. 16h of work and diving. No money spent, no money earned, but an awesome experience, beautiful diving and maybe some new friends.