- Various Crew members volunteered to be put up for auction for a dinner for two with the winning bidder at Portofino.
- Bridge tour
- Engine Room tour
- Learn to drive the rescue boat (we have two small rescue boats on board)
- Eat at Windjammer free for 15 days (excluding breakfast, since it's very busy)
- Various art pieces donated by Park West to be auctioned for charity
- 24 hour Room Service free for 15 days
- A Balcony guest stateroom for one cruise (only if one is available)
Most of the items got surprisingly high bids, the highest bid for the night was $1000 for one of the two balcony staterooms. I bid on a small number of things and ended up winning the Bridge tour and Room service for 15 days for $150 each. A rather large purchase for my pay bracket but I know the money is going towards a great cause (and on and island we visit so that we can see some results).
The Bridge tour is no ordinary Bridge tour. Rarely do our guests get such an opportunity and even then they get the same Bridge tour that every crew member gets when they join a new ship as part of safety training. Apparently I'll get to sit in the captain's chair, blow the ship's horn, and other things that can only really be offered on a private tour. As a technical kind of guy I think it will be very interesting and a great experience. Once the 15 days room service was bid up to $175, the auctioneer made an offer for anybody who will pay $150 for it to bid that much and he would give it to all of us, so that is what I did. I think it will come in very handy on the upcoming 14-day Christmas and New Year's cruise as it's a very busy time for all who work onboard and having some meals delivered to my cabin will be a real treat... not to mention my coworkers all want in on it too haha.
In addition, all who registered bid cards were entered in a raffle to win some art pieces and I ended up winning one of those too... the one I won was my favourite of those raffled so I think I'll enjoy it. Park West is going to ship it home for me free of charge.
That's all I have for today... I start duty again tomorrow and then we go into the Christmas cruise, then right into Drydock. There will likely be another post before Christmas and a couple during drydock with some pictures of the work going on around the ship. It's possible that the ship may not have Internet access and I may not have time to take my laptop ashore to post them so rest assured that I will type them up during drydock and post as soon as I can.
Update:
As I published this post, John started his daily crew announcement and informed us that the total raised by the crew auction was in excess of $10 000, not a bad donation at all.
Can you tell me when in San Jaun are you docked down town?
ReplyDeleteI don't think we dock downtown... There are some shops if you walk a bit but it doesn't seem like downtown to me. This obviously isn't the best answer but unfortunately it's all I know about it. I've only been off in San Juan a couple of times from Explorer and in my experience there didn't seem to be a whole lot to do near the pier.
ReplyDeleteCaptian Olav gave me a private tour of the bridge on Halloween of this year. It was really cool to be up in the bridge when we were sailing away from Bermuda. Hope you enjoy it up there.
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