Here is one journal entry from working onboard the Rum Runner Cairns dive boat.
To see MORE just follow the link to
my "One Year in Australia" blog
by clicking on Bart to the LEFT.
OR here: http://straya1.blogspot.com/
To see MORE just follow the link to
my "One Year in Australia" blog
by clicking on Bart to the LEFT.
OR here: http://straya1.blogspot.com/
Day 215 Mon 11/12/2012
Solar Eclipse Trip
“This trip was so out of control & hectic it will be hard to tell the story with justice. I never did figure out how this group knew each other. The lady putting the trip together was older. She had everything “organized”, & we let her control the madness. The group was too large to fit on the boat. So half of the passengers boarded the water taxi to Fitzroy Island while the other half boarded the Rummy.
NOTE: Initially the other half of the group had booked the Vagabond dive boat, Tommy’s old employer. This boat, however, has recently been dry docked with major hull damage due to a leak that had caused extensive damage to the vessel.
We have NO CLUE who was on which boat, which can be dangerous for safety reasons. Jason was our skipper on this trip though, & he said EFF IT we will figure it out later. It will work out, right?
We took the first group to the reef for one or two dives, sailed back to Fitzroy Island, ferried them to the island for dinner, & then tried to figure out who was staying on the boat versus the island.
NOTE: We had no idea at this point. The lady in charge was super nice, but from what we could tell guests were changing minds on whether to stay on the boat or stay on the island. We didn’t care, but it was making it very hard to keep up with who we were taking out to sea. Having a definite roster on this boat was something Richie and Jase took very seriously. The DMs job on these dive boats is to make sure you go out to sea with the same people you took out. This was a task I shared with Bart, Julia and now Tommy. We were a little worried about head counts with this madness.
Once all of the passengers were off of the boat and on the island, Jase started slinging beers with us. Next we went to the island to the only bar on it near the resort, named Foxy’s. The skipper, Jase, bought multiple rounds of drinks for the crew as guests from the trip slowly rolled in.
Our lady in charge had games planned for all of us including clay sculpting & “Guess what role each crew member has on the boat.” More than half of the group had not set foot on the Rum Runner yet so they were the only ones allowed to play that game. It was pretty apparent Jase was the skipper being fully tattooed & dark from years of ocean & sun. They group guessed him as sipper easily.
The rest was funny. Tommy was indeed our 21 year old dive instructor with more dives than Bart, Julz & I combined, but he looks & acts 12. The crowd agreed that I had to be the instructor, Julia was the hostee, Bart was the DM (Dive Master), and Tommy was definitely the DMT (Dive Master In-Training). Hahahaha, Tommy quickly let it be known as he reached up to put his arm around me that “this is my bitch.”
There are so few details about how and why we are here at this point. The Solar Eclipse of 2012 was only visible in Cairns and out to sea a few 100 miles. The path of the eclipse caused the city of cairns to flood with eclipse chasers and backpackers alike. This group had the idea to watch the eclipse from Fitzroy Island. This group was mostly young Australian couples with some random party animals. There was some relation between some cousins somewhere in the group, but I find out later that some of the guests on this trip literally walked up the day of and signed on with this group.
The fun began once we got the first group back to the island. We had to moor the boat up in the cay and ferry people back and forth in the tender. Our tender, or dingy, would only hold maybe 8 passengers, not accounting for anyone have extra bags. We had no idea who would be coming back on the boat tonight to sleep. We set a time to meet back at the pier if you wanted to sleep on the boat. Again, half of the guests had rooms in the resort, and the other half had paid to sleep on the boat. The solar eclipse will occur first thing on the 14th.
After we get all the guests off of the Rum Runner the crew takes a moment to enjoy themselves and not worry about the crazy crowd we have had on the boat. We slam a few beers with the rowdy tunes cranked up. We have no clue how many or who is on the boat in the morning. Some people are sleeping on the island, but they are supposed to be on the trip in the morning. We are all flying by the seat of our pants. We drink another beer. Bart, Julia, Tommy, Jase & I load up into the tender and head for land.
We find the Foxy’s Bar completely dead. There is no one there. I guess the island is pretty dead at the moment. We step up to the bar, where Jase lays down the law. Drinks fly! This might be the first time in a long while the entire crew is on a trip together and left alone on land at a bar. Normally we are stuck on the boat together having to tend to guests needs and keeping the boat afloat. This trip is so different. I assume some of our passengers started hearing us down at Foxy’s raising hell, because slowly but surely they all came to the bar.
The games they had planned were mostly icebreaker games. It was a good effort to get the group all together and laughing, but the group was unorganized. We were all better off shooting pool and talking over a beer. However, the “Guess Your Crew” game was fun, right Tommy? Only a few people wanted to come back and sleep on the boat tonight, which was fine by us. Only one trip in the tender and we could all go to bed.
There is plenty more where this story came from at http://straya1.blogspot.com/ if you want to read more. ENJOY & Thanks for reading! :) Happy Travels Mate!