Steve and Cathy's Blog

Some Sea Days are more eventful than others, and today would qualify as eventful.  It started off quietly enough, what with sleeping in until 6:30 (!) and then having breakfast.  Our room steward Slahvy (I have no idea how to properly spell his nickname, but this is how it’s pronounced) needs an opportunity to make up our room, so we head down to Deck 4 to hang out.  We often wander around after breakfast to give him time to do the room. You never know what might happen and this day was no different! The chairs and couches at Destination Services are taken, so, fortuitously it turns out, we sit opposite Ricardo, the Around the World Concierge.  He is a very, very sharp guy – perfect for this position – and not just because he knows us by name, which he has since the first time we met him.  He is a wealth of information and suggestions.

At any rate, we read and write and what not until we think our room is ready.  As we stand up to go upstairs, Ricardo stops us to ask if we might be available to have dinner with the Chief Engineer and the Staff Chief Engineer this evening.  It takes us a split second to say ” Uh, yes, we are!”  You don’t pass up an opportunity to ask all your ship questions face to face with senior officers.  We guess that someone couldn’t attend and he chose us mainly because, well, we were right there in front of him.  What luck!

And we have yet another opportunity to learn about ship operations today as well, because at 11:00am, there is a Q&A with Insignia Food & Beverage, and Housekeeping Departments, with F & B Director Roberto Paterno, Executive Chef Farid Oudir, Restaurant Manager Ryan Pretorius and Chief Housekeeper Sladjana Stevanovic.  For thirty minutes, they answer questions that Leslie Jon has prepared as well as ones we have submitted.

I am proud to say that my two were included.  The first was about training of the staff.  There is not one person employed on this ship that isn’t as pleasant, courteous, attentive, positive and professional as can be.  I don’t care what their position is, they say hello to every guest as he/she walks by.  They cannot do enough for us.  And they are trained to a highly professional level, with not one single detail left out.  So I asked where they are trained.  Answer: right here on board.  They are constantly training, but it is all done on board.  Of course, they make good hires in the first place.

My second question was a supply chain one (of course).  During the course of the journey, we have seen ocean containers being delivered to the ship at various ports.  What we find out is that, while some fruits and vegetables are purchased locally, most of them come from Europe.  In some cases, especially with fruit, the provisions are flown in from Europe, picked up at the airport and delivered to the ship.  There are other containers of non-perishables shipped from Europe, from the United States and elsewhere to meet the ship at a given port.  Most of the time, that works, but, hey, it’s transportation, so occasionally the containers haven’t arrived when the ship must leave.  So the late containers are forwarded to another port.  As an example, we were supposed to receive a container in Cape Town.  It didn’t show, so it was forwarded to the Seychelles and met the ship there.

The Executive Chef has 60 people working for him in the kitchens.  The Chief Housekeeper has 47.  This is a huge operation.  It was a very interesting half hour, and it also gave us all a chance to applaud their efforts and those of their staffs.

Our next non-routine outing was Afternoon Tea in Horizons.  This is a daily 4:00pm occurrence, and today we are especially drawn because they will be serving crepes, so we head up there.  Luckily we find Barbara O’Dell sitting with her friend Helma (of Rich and Helma from Allentown PA).  Of course Barbara is a fount of information about the ship and the destinations.  When she hears of our impending dinner with the Chief Engineer, she is very envious.  Barbara was the Vice President of Quality for Boeing, so you can imagine her engineering credentials.  She would kill for the opportunity to grill the engineering staff of the ship.  We hope that someday she gets her opportunity.  We have little sandwiches and tea and dessert, listen to the Smile String Quartet, and chat.  Then it’s time to head back to our stateroom.  We agree with each other that we can’t indulge in this extra meal every day, but it is fun once in a while.  Someday we will have Afternoon Tea instead of dinner.

At 7:15pm, we are at the Grand Dining Room.  We meet two other ATW guests who are also having dinner with the officers.  They are Phyllis and her mother Ruth from Los Angeles.  They are both very friendly table companions.  The officers come in and we are introduced to Chief Engineer Nedyalko Tonchev and Staff Chief Engineer Niko Simunovic.   Cathy is seated next to Nedyalko, who is from Bulgaria, and I am seated next to Niko, who is from Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Niko has been at sea for thirty years (since he was 18), starting with many years on freighters.  When I asked why he switched to passenger ships, his answer was interesting: there aren’t enough crew members on a freighter to make good friends.  He got bored just reading and watching the same two movies night after night (that he could get at a special shop for maritime employees and turn in at another port).  He has been with Oceania for four years, and on Insignia for a year.  He has two sons at home in Dubrovnik and works ten weeks on and ten weeks off. [Steve asked if they had contacts in different ports to help out if anything went wrong with the engines or anything else. Niko looked at him quizzically and said “No. We have four engines. If something goes wrong with one of them, we run on three and fix the other one.” Just about every “what if” question was answered with a look and “we fix.” ]

We had seen Chief Engineer Tonchev at the first Q&A a couple of weeks back.  He seemed to be uncomfortable and was very reserved at that event.  We figured he would want to be anywhere but mixing it up with the passengers.  Boy, did we have the wrong impression of Nedyalko Tonchev!   He is as gregarious as they come, full of good humor.  He talked about places he had been, and had a great series of photos on his phone about an encounter with a tiger.  He is a very fun guy, and I think he had a better time this evening than even he expected. [He told us a few things about the ship, such as how much water the converters (sea water to fresh) produce each day, fuel consumption, average speed, stuff like that. Then he picked up his menu and said, “enough work talk, let’s order food!” and proceeded to order five courses for himself and bottles of wine for the table. I asked him if he was the same guy who was at the Q&A and when he said yes, I said “gosh I thought you were a different person, that guy was so quiet!” He laughed. They were both very cool.]

We pretty much closed the place – around 9:30.  Cathy and I went back to the room thinking: “Tomorrow is going to come awfully early.”  We have another time change, so it’s really almost 11:00 before we crash.  And Steve must meet Sho the personal trainer at 6:30.  And we have an excursion beginning at 8:30.  Oh, my.