Sixth Cruise

I still haven't lost track of how many cruises I've been on so far, and that's a good thing. This cruise I have the duty of port-manning, which is a bummer. By law, a certain number of crew members must be on the ship at all times even when the ship is docked. Every 6 cruises or so, we are assigned port-manning which means that we can't leave the ship for that cruise. So I'm stuck on board, and I won't get to get off in Key West or Cozumel this time around. The next time I can get off the ship is next Monday in Miami before my fifth week here begins.

Yesterday, the highlight of my day was sitting in with the Caribbean band up on the open-air Lido deck. They are a four piece band who play reggae, calypso and other island music. Their guitar player, Kelvin from Dominica, let me play his Les Paul. Their rhythms are great, and I had a blast. I played mostly Bob Marley songs with them because those were the tunes we knew in common. The keyboard player Leechan told me to play more sharp, not meaning higher in pitch, but more short and precise to chop through the mix. They invited me come back an sit in again so I'm psyched. One funny thing about that band is that all their gear pretty much destroyed. Their stage is outside, so the sea air ages their equipment very quickly. The drummer cymbals and the bass players strings are literally green, and there's rust all over the place. They still sound good though.

I also wrote a new song yesterday. It's actually the first full song that I've finished since my CD release concert in January, which was a long time ago. Also, I finished some simple arrangements of some play-on tunes that our show band is going to play before in some coming cruises. Hopefully I'll gain some momentum and keep writing.

This afternoon, we have a band rehearsal to rework some tunes since as of this cruise we are without a trombone player. I think we're getting a new trombone player in a few weeks, but until then we have to change our repertoire. Now that we have a piano player and one less horn, I'm probably going to get to take a lot more guitar solos. I'm also hopefully going to start singing with the band this week once we fix our monitors.

I'll have a lot of down time on board since I'm port-manning. I try to write again over the next couple days.