I worked hard for months prior to this voyage to assemble the best possible faculty, and all indications so far is that they are as good as I had hoped. They are all accomplished scholars, and a program that half a dozen of them offered last night on safe,sensitive travel demonstrated how much they care about the students' well-being.
But no matter how good they are, there's no way they--or I-- can match the crew. All members of the crew—from the captain to the safety specialists to the folks who serve food in the dining halls—are remarkable: the great majority of them have been associated with Semester at Sea over multiple voyages.
The excellence of the crew is visible each day in the pristine condition of the corridors, the high quality of food served under challenging circumstances to a large number of people, and the speed and efficiency with which new circumstances are responded to. This morning the young son of a faculty member pointed out to me an injured bird on a deck just around from the exercise room—a small dark bird, of a kind I saw on shore when we were in Mexico: it's unclear whether it has been a stowaway since we were there or somehow got on more recently here in the middle of the ocean. The arrival of such a bird is, I know, not an unprecedented circumstance—if you glance my blog from the Spring 2012 SAS voyage you'll find an account of the arrival and handling of a much larger bird—but it still requires some deliberation on the part of the crew, since such things have to be handled in ways consistent with maritime law, ship practice, etc. Still, within minutes four crew members were attending to it. It looked badly hurt—its attempts to fly set it repeatedly hard against the wall—so I don't know what will become of it or can.
But the speed and efficiency with which it was attended to models the way we on board are attended to. We're all out of place here, necessarily, and all a bit vulnerable, except for the crew, who attend to this world with the precision and pride of a master gardener. On my last voyage a few students, anxious lest winds delay our arrival in a port at which they'd reserved catamarans, approached me and asked me to speed up the boat. I replied that the one thing that should give them the greatest confidence about the program is the great distance that I, an English professor (after all), am kept from such decisions. I was making a joke, sort of it, and repeat it in that spirit now, but the truer version would be to say that I needn't ever do anything other than to defer to the brilliant crew on matters pertaining to our safety and comfort on board.
By the way, we all turned our clocks back one hour last night. One great luxury of sailing in the direction we are as that we'll frequently gain a night's sleep.
