"Closing Time"

For those of you that sailed with me in Fall 2000 you will love this. The official last song of Summer 2007 is “Closing Time”. Now I should probably preface this with saying that this song does not resonate with the students, but rather the staff and faculty as it's the last song we play after our staff/faculty parties. I should also let you know that I’m writing this at 2:30am after our second of (hopefully) many pre-port after parties in the Faculty Staff Lounge.

For those of you who have not sailed on Semester at Sea I may have to explain this a little. Like I’ve mentioned time and time again there are not standard working hours on Semester at Sea…except the night before we enter a port. This night is known as “pre-port”. This is because we have a meeting with the entire shipboard community the night before we enter a port and explain the logistics of the port and any other pertinent information that people may need to know. This is also a night where alcohol is not served to the students. The main point in explaining this is to say that none of the faculty or staff has any responsibilities after the pre-port meeting. It’s fair to say this is our favorite night of each crossing. When I sailed in Fall 2000 we had what we loving called “Pre-port Tipsy”. This meant we went into someone’s cabin, served up cocktails and watched “pre-port” from the cabin. This time around we are not broadcasting “pre-port” on the TVs so we have resulted to “Pre-port after parties”.

These events consist of the younger staff and faculty (20, 30 and d 40 somethings) and a very good time. We usually head up to Staffulty around 10:45 or so and turn the music on and have a full-on dance party. People take turns DJing and a good time is had by all. This tradition (I guess that’s what you call it after two pre-ports) started spontaneous before Acapulco when a group of us went up to Staffulty as it was closing. A few people stuck behind and there you have it. I must admit, tonight was totally premeditated and pre-planned as Tom (our Asst. Dean) ordered mini-burgers, spinach quiches and scallops wrapped in bacon for the after party. The word was spread only by mouth and those who knew what they were getting themselves into showed up with all the enthusiasm in the world. If I had a dollar for every time someone said they never wanted to go home or they were having the time of their life I would probably not need to go back to work in August. Okay, so reality is, I’d probably feed myself for a day or two with that money but none the less, it was an amazing time. I can hardly wait for pre-port Ecuador.

(insert 3 1/2 hours of sleep here)

We arrived in Panama this morning and it was a spectacular sight. The sky was covered with one giant dark rain cloud and there was a rim of light just at the horizon. It was pouring rain with lightening getting closer and closer to the ship. Out of the cloud cover the city skyline appeared without any warning. It was one of the coolest moments I can remember. It looked exactly like a Batman movie. The other very cool thing was all of the ships anchored waiting for their turn to transit the Panama Canal. It was like a life size Battleship game. Unfortunately, due to the bad weather and fierce rain that was dropping no one got pictures of this scene. It will just be something I’ll keep in my head.

At this moment the overwhelming verdict is to get off the ship and stay off the ship. We are not docked at a pier but rather anchored off the coast, which means we must tender to the pier. This process is time consuming and can really throw your plan off if not timed exactly right. This morning has already proven to be quite a challenge. The ship was rocking so severely that we could not get anyone into the tender boats. We ended up with a handful of people in them and the gangway was crashing against the tender boat so hard they had to postpone all further embarkation. Finally, after about 20 minutes they ended up taking the small group of people in the tender to the shore and have been working on stabilizing the ship a bit more. Given the plans we already made ahead of time for Sat-Mon and this morning’s experience with the tendering process, I have made the executive decision that I’m leaving the ship and not coming back until Monday. It just makes life so much easier.

Nate’s flight lands today at 1pm and we’re meeting at the terminal. We’ll have to tender back to get him checked in and drop his things off so hopefully the tendering process will be a bit smoother. I’m sure he’ll be tired since he’s flown all night but his dad gave us the name of a wonderful resort that is sounding GREAT right about now. On Saturday we’re heading with some friends to the Caribbean side of Panama for some R&R at the beach. Let’s see if we can get some of this cloud cover and rain to go away. We’ll be back with a full report after the weekend so hold tight for more adventures to come.