I steered the ship and I liked it

09.16.10 | 5 Comments

When we were around Cuba, we were hanging out on the bridge with 3rd mate Jeoffrey. He looked at the map and coordinates and said: “Hey Steph, do you want to steer the ship? We need to change the heading”. I was like… “uh, are you sure?”. He said: “Sure! We need to go from 180 to 204 [degrees]”. Me: “Uh, hellz yeah!” (I probably didn’t really say that, but that’s definitely what I thought).

He put me in front of the steering wheel (which looks very much like an arcade game wheel, only a little more “meaty”), showed me the knob to turn and the screens to monitor. Steps were: check our current heading, push-and-turn the knob 5 degrees at a time, wait for the ship to respond (a few seconds) and repeat the process until we get to 204.

Here I am focused on not accidentally capsizing the ship… gentle!

It was incredibly cool to turn a little dial and feel/see the whole ship slowly change its course. I mean, that thing is big! I ended up really getting into it. Maybe a little too much…

That’s right, uh-huh. Pretending I own the ship (the captain wasn’t around).

Stephanie, this is serious business… stop fooling around. Ok.

(I don’t even know if that’s the right hand gesture to do, but it sure felt serious.)

I had a blast. Could I have done this on a passenger cruise? I think not!

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