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!

Cuba seen from the bridge deck on Monday.

Justin posted a little more about it.

We’ve been on the ship for a solid week now and I feel like we’re getting a hang of things. Oh and by the way, we will only refer to this ship as a ship, since we got our wrists slapped by the captain when we called it a boat. “Sacrilège”! But don’t worry, we’ve made peace. Whenever we get it wrong, he now laughs (and probably thinks to himself… poor idiots, they’ll never make it 28 days on my ship, muah ha ha).

Moving on. Our days on the ship seem to be similar to a prix fixe menu. Pick 2-3 items per course:

Mornings:
– Sleep in and miss breakfast
– Wake up at 8am and have breakfast
– Exercise (yoga on the deck or cardio in the gym)
– Shower/tidy the room/do laundry
– Read outside on the deck
– Go up to the bridge* and chat with Jeoffrey (3rd Mate) until noon.

Lunch

Afternoons:
– Nap
– Blog
– Nap?
– Take a walk around the ship
– Sit on a deck chair and space out or read
– Nap!
– Work on a crochet project
– Watch the waves/clouds/other ships
– Draw/paint/take photos
– Have a beer/snack

Dinner

Evenings:
– Read
– Keep working on crochet project
– Sip on some wine
– Watch a DVD
– Go to the bridge* and observe how dark nights are
– Post on blog
– Draw/paint
– Play cards
– Write about the day in a journal

In any given day, we never do all of the above… maybe two or three items per chunk of day (if we feel especially productive). Needless to say, this is very relaxing and no boredom is to be found yet.

*The bridge is the navigation room at the very top of the superstructure we stay in. It’s probably the coolest spot of the ship. More on that later.

Relaxing and cooling off before dinner.

Talking to a number of people about our container ship travel plans, we realized there were a few questions that seemed to come back regularly. So here are the most asked questions and a few that I threw in there as extra info.

1. A container ship… why would anyone want to do that?
Justin posted about this subject, but ultimately the real answer is: why not?

2. They take passengers?
Yes, a small portion of cargo ships (around 1%) have extra rooms they decide to rent to passengers to make a little extra money.

3. How many passengers do they take?
This ship only takes 6 and at the moment, there are just 3 of us. As a general rule, they take no more than 12, otherwise they would need to hire a doctor on board.

4. How do you even book a trip like that?
There are a few travel agencies that specialize in cargo travel. We went through one in Germany called Hamburg-Süd.

5. Where will you sleep? In a container?
Haha although some containers get transformed into homes by some architects, on the ship they’re made just to carry stuff, not people. Actually, we stay in a double cabin inside the white superstructure in the back of the ship. That’s where all the crew stays and eats, and it’s where the navigation happens.

6. What are amenities like?
Our cabin has a double bed, a couch, a coffee table, TV, DVD player, our own bathroom with toilet, shower and sink, a small fridge, a desk and a closet. It’s actually quite spacious.

7. What will you eat? Do you have to bring your own food?
We have a cook! Well, the crew’s cook, but we’re eating in the officers mess. The food is actually not bad at all. It’s not gourmet but it’s well balanced (each meal has some type of meat, some type of vegetable, some type of starch and fruit). They even have Nutella on the table! If anything, the portions are too big, so most of the time, Justin and I split a meal… we figured that out after stuffing ourselves a couple of times.

We did however bring few comfort foods and drinks, like nuts, pretzels, cheese, dried fruit, some beer and wine. On that topic, we can buy beer and wine on the ship at a reasonable price in case we run out.

8. What will you do with all that time?
Well, a whole lot of nothing. When do you ever have time to just hang out, let your mind wander for any length of time, nap as many times as you want, meditate. But that would get old, so we brought plenty of books, our computers, painting supplies and yarn for some crochet projects.

9. Do you have internet on the boat?
Nope, no internet. But we rented a satellite modem to get access at sea. Right now, we haven’t been able to make it work yet, but are trying to troubleshoot. So for now, we’re just seeking out internet cafes at the ports along the way.

10. Can you walk around the ship?
Yes, it took us a while to understand the rules, but essentially we can walk all around the ship. We have access to the officers mess anytime (which has a stash of DVDs… mostly Russian), there is outside space on each deck where we can hang out (our deck is the nicest and they even put some reclining chairs out there for us), we can go up to the bridge (the navigation room, where I am typing this blog post), there’s a gym (very sparingly equiped, but Justin seemed to have had a good workout this morning) and we can walk the length of the ship with the authorization of a crew member (mostly to know that we’re out there).

11. Do you have port stops?
Yes, we will be stopping in Savannah, Georgia (where I’m posting this from), Cartagena, Colombia, and Balboa, Panama after going through the Panama canal.

12. Can you get off the boat?
Yep, we’ll get off at every port. Talking to the 3rd officer, it sounds like we’ll have a 6-8 hour window at each port to go explore. They seem to have recommendations on where to get good coffee and to be willing to arrange taxis to pick us up and return us to the boat. Apparently not all cab companies can go into ports… good to know.

13. What nationality is the crew?
The captain is Russian, the officers and cook are Filipino and all the engineers are Russian/Ukrainian.

14. Does the ship sway a lot?
Not at all. It’s so big that most of times you just feel like you’re in a giant airplane, with the vibrations and the slight tugs. We have been lucky so far, the ocean has been very calm and the weather (aside from the heat) has been compliant. I’m sure it’ll get a little rougher at times… we’ll report back on that.

Is there anything else you’d like to know?