Brain Working

Whatsoever I can say with limited brain functionality is contained herein.

Typical Day:

Wake up at 5:15 am, 1/2 hour early since the expedition leaders requested an early breakfast and lunch to accomodate excursions and activities. Make my way to the bridge to print out menus for the day; gee, do I have enough chicken to make Thai wraps for 36 guests and 16 crew? Yeah, most people eat too much protein anyway - I'll stretch it out with peanuts. Good, don't have to change anything.

Good morning Cappy (Captain Scott).

Good morning Phil. How's ya doin?

You know, tired but happy. The stewards' dishwasher upstairs isn't working again, so that sucks, but the dumbwaiter has been going strong for a couple a days, and that's really nice.

Well, that's good.

Yeah. How bout you?

Oh, great, a little loopy; runnin on a couple hours sleep.

Damn dude.

Yeah.

You gonna get a nap today?

Yeah, Sean (first mate) is so great to have along. He and I 've been working together for just lots of years, so I can pretty much turn to him at any point and just turn it over.

That must be great. Angie is kind of the same way for me. Well, back to it.

Yup, see ya later.

Make my way down three flights of stairs to the galley stopping to set the newly printed menus at the tables where guests will be sitting in a couple of hours.

In the galley now.

Mornin Ang.

Hay : )

How ya doooin?

Good.

I do some dishes, figure out what I need to get going for breakfast. Brain not working yet, so I get some pots of water on the stove eventually for oatmeal, Glacier Bay Porridge, and Poached eggs. Except the morning Shelly did it for me and I forgot which pot had all the vinegar in it (helps poached eggs set up quickly and stay together in the water), and proceeded to dump fourcups of milk into boiling vinegar water. Yeah, that pretty much makes instant cheese. Oops.

Ah, brain kicks in, better crack a couple flats of eggs for Strata Frittata. Slice some of Ang's leftover bread, butter the top, and throw in oven to toast (since I forgot to set it last night to get stale - technically I should make the whole thing with pre-staled bread the day before next week, as the egg batter will soak into the bread better and keep it from floating). While toasting, crack the eggs quickly - two at a time. Don't worry about shell, I'll strain it out later, and even if not, it tends to float to the bottom of the bowl anyway. Cut up Reindeer Sausage we buy from Hammer and Wikan Grocery store in Petersburg (small fishing town with Norweigan roots) though the sausage is actually made in Anchorage by the Alaska Sausage Company. Cut green onions, and Shelly arrives.

Mornin Shelly.

Good morning : )

Sleep good.

Yeah, but I had this crazy dream about the boat.

She recounts the crazy dream while slicing fontina cheese for my frittata.

Yeah, I always dream about the boat to when I'm working too.

After afew days thats all I dream about. Sometimes I wake up from a nap and think its the next day. Sometimes I wake up and decide I don't need that much time to prep dinner after all. Reset alarm for 1/2 hour later. Hopefully Ang and Shelly don't notice I'm late. Of course they will. Better get up. They keep me honest most of the time.

Frittata made and in the oven by 6:55 or so. Technically probably not enough time. Better turn the oven up. Technically the top will get a little browner than I'd like that way, but I just didn't get it out fast enough to make it perfect. They won't know the difference anyway. Only me and the girls will know the difference usually. That goes for a bunch of stuff.

Meanwhile Ang, the whirling dirvish that she is, has panned up two sheet pans of bacon, pulled all our other leftover breakfast meats (sausage patties, ham, yesterdays bacon) and yesterdays breakfast potatoes.

Hey Phil you want to re-use these today?

Yeah, we only got a couple orders yesterday - not worth the time to make new ones and they don't look that bad.

Sweet.

Booo-ya.

Hey, put Dr. Dre on the ipod.

We bust out Gangsta rap and one at time we thematically don our hankerchief do-rags. Ghetto thugs, yo.

Brain gets lost. Fast forward through breakfast. Lots of eggs and toast. Et cetera. Dishes. Only the third breakfast we've done, so it's still a total shit-show. Bad communication from stewards to galley and back again. Eggs fired too early sit there for minutes. Eternities.

Crew meanders down as they get time. Cereal, meat, eggs, toast, oatmeal, whatever. Any chocolate cake left from last night? Sho' nuf. Here ya go. Don't tell your physician I gave you that for breakfast.

Phil, let me finish up dishes. You go start your lunch prep.

What about all your stuff.

Oh, dinner bread is in the oven, lunch dessert is done, and I'm making Glacier Cake with all that frozen chocolate stuff.

You are a freak. I love it.

Yeah. Go.

Grab loads of veggies, some recieving pans, and set up a station. Gotta eat something first. Don't eat the bacon. You don't need the bacon. Nibble half a sausage, mmmm...that bacon sure looks good. There is plenty. Maybe half a piece. Eat some yogurt and frosted shredded wheat to make up for halves of pig products. Fortunately I pulled Spinach wraps from the freezer when my brain wasn't working, so they're thawing above the range. Better flip them around. Put peanuts in the oven to toast. Get water boiling for Rice Stick Noodle salad. Chop veg. Chop veg. Chop veg.

Crap, forgot the chicken. Quick thaw in a pot of boiling water. Should be done just in time.

Fast forward to just in time. Kind of hot still, but fully cooked, chopping the chiken along with the leftover chicken from Satay yesterday. Damn, why did I make chicken with peanut sauce two days in a row? Planning for months, and some little last minute switch makes me all of the sudden look like an amateur. Nobody will notice except me. No one ever does usually. Or that paranoid voice in my head that says they all notice, but don't say anything.

Remind myself that so far, every report has been positive. So far so good.

Plenty of wraps for crew. Try not to irritate Shelly and Ang with my extreme sense of urgency and particularness about how much filling each wrap gets. A little more, a little more, no thats too much. Here's how I want to roll it, here's how I want to plate it, here's what goes with it. No like this. That's my job though, and they know that. They don't want my job. They tell me that every other day practically.

Ang has made a huge batch of hot cocoa for the passengers to have on the glacier viewing skiff ride. Too bad I didn't buy a quarter of the hot chocolate mix we needed this week. Oh well, we'll just have to make it from scratch and hope we don't run out of milk.

Break time is getting closer. Now it's 1:00 pm, we're all cleaned up from lunch, crew is fed, Shelly and Ang got a smoke break, I resisted this time. I'm being good.

Ang, busting it out like mad, gets the brie trimmed and wrapped in Phyllo with Raspberry sauce. Probably prettier than I could have made it myself. Too bad she's leaving in a couple weeks and I've got to train new guy. Oh well, he could be awesome too, and Ang has needed her own boat for quite a while. I'm proud she's finally got the Quest as her own. Hope that treats her well.

Duck breasts are thawing now,

Ladies, go take your break. I'm gonna stay and do Caccitori veg. That way there'll be less time when no one is in the galley - just in case.

Chop veg. Chop veg. Chop veg. Listen to ipod. Chat with Roger, the night engineer and resident electrician (considered a "plank owner" because he spent months wiring the Explorer inside and out.) Roger wants to make cinnamon rolls tonight (for crew), so I show him where all the stuff is. Adios man, I'm going on break now. Make a list for Ang and Shelly of stuff to do when they get off break and come down. Skin and pin-bone salmon sides, make daily gourmet cheese platter, pick crab for Salmon Roulade, chop four shallots, sautee in butter, and then add a bottle of Pinot Grigio (being served at dinner) to reduce for a while.

3:15. Get to my bunk, settle in, shift and fold some laundry. Hey, I found the other half of that invoice I was supposed to send last Friday. Gotta remember to e-mail accounting. Play some Jack Johnson in Strum and Sing mode, trying not to wake Ang and Shelly napping across the hall in the port side five-man bunk. Speed through a few relaxing tunes, put on the headphones, set the alarm for 4:45. Its now 3:36. Pretty good nap today. Dream about the crew, but not specifically the boat. It was a dream about bonding with people under stress. very appropriate. Get woken up by Ang asking if she should start the Coconut Curry Butternut squash soup. Sure I say. Roll over and go back to sleep.

Wake up. Today still. Go down, hazily bust out dinner prep. Never made the salmon before, hope it works. Yup, not bad. A couple rave reviews. Whatever, I know the difference. Shelly does the duck breast Caccitori style, smashing job. I always add too much Kalamata to the veg, so I tell her to do it instead. One person wants plain salmon, one person can't eat tomatoes. Pull some aside before adding tomato sauce. Everything comes out well and the Fennel tops look nice on the plates, like dill but lighter green and wispier. I know the difference.

Clean up, feed crew, though mostly they feed themselves. Send Ang up to bed since she's been doing early riser muffins and fruit. Shelly and I finish cleaning and start the floors. Shelly finishes the floors and I go with her up to the ledo deck (top of the boat where the smoking section is for crew). There are whales 100 yards off the bow just lazily feeding, but we can hear their blowhole noises like deep pipe organs ripping paper. We chat about life and Alaska and cooking. Commiserating too, since there's always plenty to complain about, but we can't really say anything to anyone. Even on a ship this size, it is a bad idea to rock the boat in any way.

Go to bed.

Set alarm for 5:45 am

Type.

Sleepy time.

11:24 pm

File.

Save As.

Blog 3.

Dumbwaiter Working

Dumbwaiter working. Finally. We're struggling I think. Hard to tell. The passengers seem to be very excited about everything we're serving. Tough to be a chef with the critical eye of Mordor looking over every little thing. This galley is a dungeon where the mystical arcane arts of smoke and mirrors is practiced.
We'll never tire. We'll never give up. No matter the challenges, the buildup of tooth grinding, and everything stays right where it is. The challenge is going to be the slow deliberate changes that convince the fish it's swimming upstream, and not falling behind. Our destination is vacation, though we're surrounded by vacationer's paradise. We'll begin the repetition of recipes next week. We'll see the same things again until time gets slimier and quicker and all the party can build up along with the agony.
I'd move to Southeast Alaska someday. I'd also give up working on boats someday. As difficult as owning a restaurant may be, I'm not sure there is anything harder than knowing you'll not see home for so long, knowing your loved ones can't see you or share your day. Hard to want to write it all down, keeping all the agony and ecstacy bottled up for posterity. I guess that need to share comes from pride and suffering together, and wishing Carey could pat my head and smile and say, "what a good job you did." I try to recreate some of the magic wherever I can in my not-boat time, but there is something like a burden which drives my cart right now. The burden carries rewards, but I've always been one to shrug off burdens no matter the loss of reward.
Time to keep my feet and sleep. Goodnight.

After We Left Seattle

We disembarked our pseudo-passengers on our last morning in Seattle. Since we weren't coming back to Seattle any time soon there was a last-minute scramble to department, grocery and hardware stores to purchase everything we could think of. For me it was a nice breath of free-time after two weeks of hard and busy work.

The whole crew was elated once we left. In addition to our regular crew of sixteen, we brought half a dozen folks with us for the repositioning trip. Our President/CEO, Captain Voss, the Project Manager for Explorer's refit, and several carpenters/electricians/engineers to help finish up the laundry lists of things to complete.

Underway, the schedule was easier on the galley staff than anyone else. One of the three of us would make crew breakfast; Angie spent time making cookie dough and breads to put in the freezer; several gourmet meals were prepared for the crew so we could get back into the swing of things and get our timing down with the new equipment. The bridge crew on the other hand, was taking shifts since we were running twenty-four hours a day. Tim Voss ended up with the night shift more often then not, but he still found time to let me beat him at scrabble a couple of times. Now ASC's Director of Operations, Tim was my captain for most of the first summer I worked for ASC, and though he's lecherous and has a sordid past (or maybe because of those things), he's one of the best people I know. He's well-read and very intelligent, and many of us refer to him simply as 'Big Daddy'.

We were able to stop by Buttedale, half-way through Canada along the inside passage. Now abandond, this old cannery looks like a haunted theme park, complete with a large dormitory, several stories high with all the windows broken out and a sizable tree now growing on the roof in addition to numerous houses and warehouses and docks. Many of the buildings and a good chunk of the dock have collapsed, some right into the water. A salty dude named Dale lives there as a caretaker with his dogs. Every time we stop by we always give him a care package with baked goods and fresh fruits. I've never met him, but I've fed him several times.

The last day before arriving in Juneau (a four day trip total) the crew all went on a hike together at a beautiful waterfall near Thomas Bay. A little book, "The Strangest Story Ever
Told," tells of the legendary half-otter half-men who are said to haunt the Bay. These "Kushtikas" are often joked about amongst the crew, being blamed for equipment malfunctions and the like. Cascade Creek has a torrent of water and makes for a lovely photo spot. Particularly amazing is how the trail wanders through a wind-swept bluff next to part of the falls, so hikers are regularly doused with a huge mist. The whole experience was very magical, especially at sunset, and helped our band of strangers bond a little more. At the top of the trail, just past the high, wooden foot-bridge (a bit scary if you're afraid of heights), I was able to stop for a moment and dip my hand into the rushing water. The extreme amount of air bubbles gave my hand a peculiar soft sensation, and I said my own version of a prayer to my wife (serene water places make me think of her).

Once we reached Juneau we had one last night of freedom. I spent most of it on the phone, and others were still busily trying to make the ship ready for passengers the next day. On each stateroom there was a yellow notepad paper list of all the tiny details still to be completed. We never got to all of them, but most people wouldn't notice them.