To new shores

Those of you who have followed the Blog recently will know that this is an important day: After three weeks on the open waters, after the crossing of the equator, after waves and waves and more waves, finally MV FRAM reaches the shores of Europe to start the season in the northern hemisphere. Not that everybody on board did not like the peaceful, calm course of the days, but now it is time again for some action! And Lisbon is the ideal starting point for probably some of the most colourful itineraries that will bring us to eleven countries in one month. Springtime in Western Europe is the motto of this week's trip, which will take us along the coast of Portugal, the northern tip of Spain, France and the British Channel Islands. 

And springtime it surely was for all the new arrivals, coming mostly from Norway and England, places that are just about to shake off winter's cold grip. A gentle 26 degrees and slightly hazy skies that gave the silhouetta of Lisbon's old town a nigh-oriental impression. Not much time to marvel, though, cause everybody is brought straight to the pier where their home for the next seven days lays fast. For more than just a few the sighting of MV FRAM is not a first, it also is a well-known routine to check in, activate your cruise card and receive the luggage at the cabin; some have been three times on the ship within the last twelve months… So, welcome back everybody, and a warm welcome to you who discover FRAM for the first time!

Eight o' clock sharp, the lines are cast and we make our way towards the mouth of the Tejo River, while the sun sets in the West. Warm air on the decks during the necessary saftey drill, cold champagne during the Captain's welcome. And suddenly it is already midnight, and the decks are getting quiet. A good first night to everybody!

Lisbon

We have arrived Lisbon, already the 3of April and the ship was filled with people who were doing all kind of annual audits and surveys, maintenance people from Italy, Norway etc and we are getting ready to get passengers tomorrow. For anyone embarking tomorrow reading this blog, an important message goes out to a few of you which we have not been able to reach. We have had a pier change to what it says in your documentation. The pier we are at is Santa Apolónia Jusante.

Lisbon is beautiful in Spring, after a long and cold winter in northern Europe, the feeling of proper spring and warm weather is soothing for anyone now. Recommendations are strong from us here onboard to make a spring journey in Southern Europe once. It is invigorating..pure! Sunshine, energy, wonderful.

Tomorrow the passenger arrive approx 1600 onwards to commence this journey we have planned for the last few weeks, and we hope they will enjoy it. We hope for a lot of good weather to enjoy the sights, all but one destination on this first voyage we go to have one UNESCO World Heritage Sight or more. Our lectureres will tell us more about during the journey. This is our main focus, learning as we travel with high qualified lecturers onboard, in a friendly, casual atmosphere.

April fool and Award night

This can be a dangerous day to believe in anything, and of course there is no exception on FRAM. Those who signed the declaration list for amount and state of clean shoes before we arrive to Lisbon, were caught by the "April-fool".

As we left Las Palmas yesterday afternoon we started to prepare for award night after more than 2 weeks with different games for single and group events, as we have described throughout the last weeks. The victorius ones were to receive their prizes tonight. Captain Rune Andreassen  handed out all awards, on the picture above Roy gets his 3 place in the Chess competition.

Housekeeping 5th place in the Olympic Games - Group Event

Galley 4th place in the Olympic Games - Group event, and by the way they deserve credit for having best group spirit, banner making, sponsorship and cheerleaders, with head cheerleader Mervyn in front left on the picture. Your pop-pom skills will go down in history Mervyn.

Restaurant 3 place . This team was close to win the whole thing, and they deserve credit for being the abolute best color coordiated team in the games, having color themes on their shirts every evening.

Left over team 2nd Place did not behave as "being left over", they were absolutely to be reckoned with, fierce competition spirit in this bunch.

Deck/Engine/Expeditionteam won the group events of the Olympic games like they did on the southbound crossing. You might guess the prize was orange shirts :-)

At the end of the evening the groups dismantled into one big group which is the crew on FRAM. We recommend you to take a look at the extensive work the galley team put down in that banner, and how many important sponsors they managed to get for the games.

We received a nice comment from Kjell Eriksmoen who will be one of our passengers from Lisbon the 7th. He is travelling together with a group of friends. Kjell, we are approaching Lisbon now, welcome onboard, looking forward to see you and your friends. We extend  that to all our embarking passengers for the upcoming voyage "Spring in Western Europe".

Todays interview is:
Name: Richardspn Quines
Position: Cabin Steward

How long time have you worked for Hurtigruten?
6 years

How many times have you crossed equator with a Hurtigruten ship?
6 times

What do you like best about the equator crossing?
I like that team work is developed in all departments and across department lines.

Is job different when the ship is crossing?
No difference in my job, the only difference is less or no passengers

Which tasks do you have during the crossing?
My tasks during the crossing is to clean, clean, clean the whole ship

Land in sight- Las Palmas

We have land in sight, we have used 17 days from Buenos Aires to Las Palmas. During the morning hours we arrived back to civilisation for a few hours. The Pilot boat arrived approx 0830 and at 0900 we were at pier to commence bunkring. In the early afternoon hours we were back out at sea. A couple of shipshandlers appeared on the pier, well aware of a crew who have not been shopping for almost 3 weeks. A little mini-mall on the pier made a nice diversion for many of the crew.

The evening games in the Group Olympics had its last tow evenings of competetive behaviour across all department borders the 30th and 31st of March.

On the pictures below you can see some of the final games. The first picture shows a game called hepp hepp hello. There are hand movements involved in it and you have to say the opposite of the one before you. The second activity picture shows an impressive effort by the galley team, as they won the game of  5 people dressing, running, undressing in jumpsuit, helmet, big-big-big boots and welding gloves.

The third activity picture shows a really messy game where both contestants are blind-folded and have to feed the opposite sitting person with whipped cream. Funny and messy.

The last activity picture shows an eating contest where the Chef has prepared a lot of things, you are not able to choose what to eat, but you draw two notes where it says what to pick up. 3 from each team participates. As you might see from the picture some of the food was tough to get down.

A couple of bumpy days

The last couple of days have been quite windy and bumpy. You feel the waves and adjust your movements for every few seconds, and in the end you do not even think about it. The human hard drive adjusts accordingly. Funny thing the human body as such. Onboard the many tasks are concluded in accordance to plan, others found obsticles and are running a bit behind, but overall we are en route with our "Crossing tasks". We are heading for Las Palmas, due to arrive Thursday morning for a couple of hours to get fuel. Next destination "Lisbon" April 3 until April 7th, where we start our "Spring in Western Europe Voyage", ending up in Dover April 15th.

We have a questions to our biologists out there if you follow the blog a bit, we have been passing belts of this seaweed several days both before the Equator and after.What kind of seaweed is it? We can see it's drifting far out in the ocean. Our current position is Latitude 24 degrees 3,2 N Longiude 019 degrees 7,2 W and current temperature is 22 derees Celcius.

The evening entertainment last night reached a new level when our sporty Hotelmanager Bjørn Erik performed his excellent story about the Italian "Antonio" visiting New York, and having slightly language problems when in the "Big Apple". Very entertaining performance by Bjørn Erik, before we continued with Olympic Games. Guess the song, longest clothing line and fetch 15 things were on the program. We were running after cottonpads, douvets, umbrellas, knifes, bandaids like our life depended on these items for  while there. Loud shouting and positioning of team members at strategic places were part of the game strategy.

Todays Interview is:

Name: Ardalyn P Villanueva

Position: Waitress/Stewardess

 

How long time have you been working for Hurtigruten?

6 Years

How many times have you crossed equstor with a Hurtigruten ship?

9 times

What do you like best about equator crossings?

Relaxed working durng the day and lots of fun and excitement during the evening.

Is your job different when the ship does crossings?

Yes

Which tasks do you have during the crossing?

General cleaning all over the ship

The last few days in a nutshell

How blue is the ocean? We can assure you this photo has not been "fixed!. This is how blue it is. Picture taken Friday 25th of March at approx 5 degrees north. It is incredibly beautiful!!

Friday was a quiet day after the grand ordeal of baptism the day before. The single events were concluded at night. On Saturday the 26th the FRAM Olympic games started. 5 teams Dining, Housekeeping, Galley, Deck/Engine, and the Leftover team (Officers and Medical Team).

First game out involved running up and down the entire ship answering questions, and the last task was to find a trapped stuffed penguin in a passenger cabin. The group answering the 7 questions first got a head start on the search after the trapped penguin. Left overs were leading for all the questions, Dining and Deck just behind.

When the search started Deck department found the penguin and won this first game of the Olympics. It took a toll on quite a few of us having to run like crazy people up and down the decks after ha heavy barbeque dinner. Chef  Eduardo shows how most uf us felt afterwards. On Sunday there were three new games amongst them were egg race and "Guess the Word". The score is now a tie between Deck and Dining, that can change, keep following the Olympics on the FRAM!!

Our current position is Latitude: 19 degrees 18.1N Longitude: 023 degrees 44.6 West

We have 25 degrees outside temperature

Todays Interview is:

Name: Janardhan C Bambulkar
Position: 2nd Engineer

How long time have you been working for Hurtigruten?
For the past 4 months.
How many times have you crossed the Equator with a Hurtigruten ship?
This was the first time.
What do you like best about the equator crossings?
The people singing karaoke in the bar at night
Is your job different when the ship does the crossing?
No it is the same
Which tasks do you have during the crossing?
Cleaning of coolers, condensors, sewage pipelines, blackwater tank cleaning.

The day of judgement is here!

 This picture says it all. The equator baptism were upon us very soon, always the same day as crossing takes place.This time it was March 24th at 02:21 we we crossed the equator.

  Already in the morning Chief Purser Aleksander boldly and in good spirit showed his defeat of not bringing his certificate from his equator baptism a few years back. The result is that King Neptune will not admit anyone into his Kingdom unless they show the certificate on the day of judgement "Baptism day".  You might have to click on the picture to see the entire text he wrote around that t-shirt.

At 15:00, March 24th the ordeal began by Safetyofficer and Captain announcing King Neptune's arrival. The ceremonial event could commence in all it's horror.First on the program was to double check position. Did we really cross the equator? It's not like it is a red line. Yes we had, all in order. Bring out the the victims!!Neptune and his Police and Medical Personell have a job to do!!

 

                      Very few words can give any justice to the feeeling og being soaked in a mixture of old fish and god knows what. The smell was as you see from Marilyns face quite distinct.We also would like to direct attention to Safety Officer Andreas excellent binoculars. After the ordeal all 22 victims went through, some justice was granted by the bosun Renato who hosed the worst "dirt" off. But they all stank even after several showers. Last picture shows that Aleksander went through it with grace, and Hotelmanager Bjørn-Erik as well. We have to give a big credit to the official Baptism photographer Eduardo (Souchef), who put together the collage of pictures.

We are back !

Hello all, we have to apologize for not blogging for a whole week. We can justify only not blogging from monday to wednesday really when we had no sattelite connection at all, and we were truly alone in the big blue open. So we are blogging a bit in retro-spect now. During the days that have passed we have seen interesting things, which we think our biologists that normally travel will us in other parts of the world find interesting. We had a gathering of 6 "Masked booby" birds soaring along our way, suddenly a big dark bird appeared in their midst. We ran out with the camera, shouting, we have to get pictures for John and Manuel on this. After looking in the book we think this is a "Frigate Bird". It is described that this bird harasses other birds, and we can confirm it does. Several times it toke a dive to attack the "Masked booby".

Head chef Johan-Ludvik brought his deep-sea fishing equipment for this trip and tested aft on deck 3 after reports of sword fish was spotted, but no such luck this time.

We would also like to announce that we have opened up for anyone to comment on our blog. By mistake the comment was set to team members only.

Todays interview is:

Name: Irvin Igtanloc

Position: Motorman

How long time have you been working for Hurtigruten?

Almost 4 years

How many times have you crossed equator with a Hurtigruten Ship?
3 times

What do you like best about equator crossings?
Baptismal ceremony
Is your job different when the ship do crossings?
No differcence, it is the same as always

Which tasks do you have during the crossing?

Night duty in engine control room.

Sunday and we finally have birds

We start today with yesterday evenings events. We have had crew activities at night all week, and singles games with darts, table-tennis, chess, and last night air gun shooting.We end up getting very competitive, and next week we continue with team games which we guess will get even more competitive. This morning we got a phone call from our Safety Officer Andreas, who reported "birds" soaring around the vessel. Quick camera, need to document for John. So here it is. We have a theory after looking in the book that this is a "Masked Booby". If John or Manuel should read this, could you comment on the blog to either confirm or give us the right name? They kept us company for many hours throughout the day.

Todays interview is:

Name: Johan-Ludvik Johansen

Position: Head Chef

How long time have you been working for Hurtigruten?
Since 1989

How many times have you crossed equator with a Hurtigruten Ship?
11 times

What do you like best about equator crossings?
Cleaning all storerooms, barbeque arrangements, sun and warmer climate.

Is your job different when the ship do crossings?
Yes time for more planning of the future cruises.

Which tasks do you have during the crossing?
All the provisioning of the upcoming Europe cruises, and preparing new menus. Also make sure the crew have good food on the crossing.