best and least embarrassing thing would have been if my buttons had given out, and a few did obligingly pop off, but the others held. Of course, it need not be said that within the few seconds this all took place a huge number of people gathered around us.
Even from my very difficult position, I gathered that the general atmosphere was one of amazement. Never before had anybody in the audience seen a woman being harassed so openly. However, even though the consensus seemed to be in favor of the woman, nobody appeared to be inclined to assist her. A situation like this clearly should be savored for a while and not be broken up too quickly.
The casino manager was the first to take action, not so much from a genuine desire to help his captain in distress, but more from the fact that his level of business had dropped to just about zero within seconds. Breaking through the crowd, it still took him more time than I thought necessary to assess the situation and even longer to decide what to do about it.
Being on my hands and knees over a woman, and a total stranger at that, in the middle of a casino, desperately trying not to be too close, but at the same time invoking sobbing gasps when increasing the distance, was very unnerving to say the least.
“Get some scissors and cut her loose,” I hissed at the casino manager. “Somebody must have nail clippers or something!”
As if on command several purses opened and an impossibly small gold colored pair of scissors was produced. The casino manager, clearly unaccustomed to dealing with situations like this, white-faced and with shaking hands, started to stab at the buttons of my uniform and the lady’s straps.
“Ouch! Be careful,” I said, wincing when the sharp tip of the scissor painfully stabbed my stomach. It took more than a few of those stabs, alternately given to me or to the still gasping lady, to finally cut through the straps of the dress. A fine and expensive dress no doubt, but both the lady and I were beyond caring.
Luckily, the man who’d started the whole episode by yelling at her from behind his slot machine assisted in holding her now-strapless dress together when she got up, because I had no desire to get more involved than I already was. The crowd, strangely enough, kept rather quiet and I sensed disappointment that the scene they had witnessed was nothing more than an innocent accident.
When the woman finally saw me face to face and realized who had done this to her, complete embarrassment took over. Still red in the face from the lack of air she mumbled something like, “See you later,” and sped off, her friend doing his best to hold on to the back of her dress.
News travels very fast on a ship, because to my dismay later that evening when I had to introduce my senior officers, I saw the room was filled to the last seat and that even the corridors were crowded. Just about every passenger and several officers looked at me with broad smiles on their faces. It did my normally smooth speech little good.
I never saw the lady again. Like me, she must have kept a very, very low profile for the rest of the cruise.
Chapter 7
Paint
Maintaining a ship in top condition is a never-ending battle against rust, salt, and equipment failures. The marine environment is very hostile to just about any material that is perfectly all right when used ashore, and it’s not just the environment that creates the huge problems. For example, when a basic electric motor breaks down, the natural thing is to replace it. After all, the engineer has a brand new one in his storeroom. Cheerfully, he promises the nice lady in cabin 7078 at her air conditioning will be up and running in half an hour. Cheerfully, that is, until he discovers that his cherished spare runs on Europe’s 220 volts instead of the 110 used in the U.S. and the ship left United States waters for her repositioning cruise to Europe only hours earlier. If that stupid motor only had broken down a little sooner, he could have gotten it off any shelf in Ft. Lauderdale.
Of course, another one is ordered immediately, but when will it arrive? It’s promised to be expedited to Madeira, the first port of call. The passenger and her husband are content with this assurance, as are the increasing number of other passengers affected.
The captain and the bridge officers are preoccupied with that big depression coming in.
“Sir, it’s way too windy. We can’t get in. I recommend we cancel this harbor and move on.”
The captain agrees. The passengers’ safety must be the top concern. Of course, he doesn’t know that a crucial spare part is being flown in. So with his precious spare motor only a short mile away, the engineer, with gnashing teeth, then promises it’ll be sent ahead to Lisbon, the next port of call. As fate would have it, it arrives just a day late in there, and is yet again sent to the next port. Then finally it arrives and the by now almost desperate engineer is ready to hold the thing to his heart only to discover that because of all that handling the motor got damaged beyond repair.
Many times it happens that container ships have their own problems, and the containers filled with sorely-needed supplies that you need are sitting on that ship somewhere in the world in a dry dock. Now, I’m only talking about parts that are available. What about those thousands of items that are nowhere to be found? What about those once-in-a-lifetime designer chandeliers and other unique parts that were so plentiful when the architect designed such a beautiful ship? The supplier is often out of business by the time the part is installed. Of course, Murphy’s Law dictates that those parts least available are the ones that break down first.
We’re accustomed to all this and work around it, sometimes even creating our own architectural pieces to replace the broken ones. One time I heard the architect and the artist who’d made some of the original pieces proudly discuss one of the artifacts with a group of prospective clients. They didn’t know and couldn’t tell the difference, but they were admiring the replacement made by our very skilled Filipino carpenter.
Earlier I mentioned how destructive salt is to the ship’s exterior, so it was a joyous day indeed when our long-awaited order of paint arrived. During the preceding two months I had seen the mood of my staff captain go from downcast to downright ugly as the ship’s shiny well-kept appearance transformed itself into a grubby one, with more rust spots appearing every day on her hull and superstructure. Finally, he could paint and restore the ship’s beauty.
Looking down onto the dock from where I was standing on the bridge wing, I saw him hopping around several pallets stacked high with buckets of several colors of paint. Even from several hundred feet up, I could see his excitement. That very morning he’d shown me a stack of emails, each promising that the delivery, after several failed attempts, would reach the ship that day. I fervently hoped so, because I had the distinct impression that he was capable of harming himself if it didn’t!
His hair was in disarray when he barged into my office a half hour later.
“I can’t believe it!” he yelled, way too loud for the small space.
“Whoa, calm down. What happened?”
“They sent me every order in full! The idiots!”
I sat back. “So what’s wrong with that? You ordered it, didn’t you?
“Yes, but since they always cut every order in half, I ordered double! There’s no way I can store all that paint in the locker! You know how small that place is.”
I had to admit he was right. Looking down from the bridge at all that paint, I hadn’t made the connection that we’d have to store it all in the tiny locker we called the paint store.
“Maybe
