Laurel Weeks

Last night was calm and warm enough to leave the veranda door open all night to sleep to the sound of the boat moving through the water. I woke to what I think is sea day number four but it’s easy to lose track. This last bit of sunrise was waiting for me. Today, I give my final lecture for this leg. I began with Mutiny Goes to the Movies( about Bounty, Amistad, and Potemkin), then yesterday talked about Captain Cook, and today I will talk about ancient Polynesian navigation and its renaissance in Hawaii and elsewhere in recent years. Yesterday, as I sat watching the water, I felt a much increased admiration for those willing to put in the years of study, focus, and faith into learning to read swells, colors, cloud bottoms, winds, and stars to chart courses over thousands of miles. I am so grateful for the opportunities I have been given to share what to me feel like gleaming and precious jewels of knowledge with my fellow travelers. And now, on with my day. 

This photo captures why I love mornings at sea. For anybody who travels with me, this French press should look familiar! I like my coffee strong enough to stand up a spoon, but I get it that cruise ships need to brew something middling to please more people. Still, I am going to feel a bit bereft without my version of morning, , especially when you add half-caf to the equation so I can drink more without tripping over my tongue afterwards ( bad for a lecturer, no?) I always stock up on my favorite ground beans before I leave home, then every morning I call room service for a carafe of hot water and make my own little improvement on a beautiful day.

This is the first time I have cruised solo. Though the  cabin is exactly the same, it seems much bigger, maybe because there is only the clutter of one person. I haven’t had to triple up on hangers, or try to be thoughtful about not hogging space. But it does feel awfully quiet!  I  have been doing this so long I have already seen about a dozen crew I know, so I feel I am among friends, even if I am not traveling with any specific one.  I have wanted to try out doing this alone, just to see what it’s like, and so far so good.  But still, I suspect there are going to be plenty of times when I will wish I had someone to process it all with.  Guess that will have to be you!

 

This morning I drove off from home in San Diego in this supercharged Dodge that is so not me ( hey, the rental company gave it to me for the price of a compact, so why not?). Now I am sitting in one of the lounges on the Silver Whisper, having just driven up from San Diego to Los Angeles to catch the first leg of the 2018 World Cruise. Itinerary is 5 sea days to Hawaii, a few days in various ports in Hawaii, then on to Moorea and Tahiti.

I titled this “Casting Off” because it seems as if that captures the spirit of leaving behind the ordinary and spending the next stretch of time being—well, different.

My first lecture, I am told, is tomorrow morning,  called “Mutiny Goes to the Movies,” about Bounty, Amistad, and Battleship Potemkin, as told in classic films.

Now that my revised website is up and humming, I plan on posting every few days, and I hope you will check in to see what’s happening on the high seas. Now, to unpack!

 

Waking up in a new year is always more of an event for me than New Year’s Eve. I haven’t been to a party or even stayed up until midnight (in my time zone) for longer than I can remember except when cruising over the holidays. Must admit, in that context, it is a lot of fun, especially because I can just stagger back to my room, and by that point I know so many people onboard that  it is hardly a Times Square night with strangers.

Other than that, I always wonder what it is that people are so excited about.  A bad year behind them? A new one with genuine likelihood of being better?  Excitement about resolutions that will kick in the next morning?  Yeah, right!

But there’s that glimmer in the morning of January 1–and no, in my case it’s not that daylight hurts with a hangover.  The unknown has dawned. I won’t be in charge of all that happens, and I won’t like a lot of it, I am sure, but I am still guiding the Good Ship Laurel, and I can make of this year what I will, in many of the ways that really matter. And that’s enough to put the happy in new year for me.

Since I made the decision to put together a year of more or less continuous cruising, I have been grappling with the workload I have gotten myself in for. I knew I was going to have to plan carefully and be very disciplined to Be ready, and so far I am finishing up 2017 beautifully on track. I am now up to eighty lectures in the six years I have had cruise assignments to prepare for. Hardly seems possible—I must really love doing the work (answer:yes, I do).

My goal ( actually my need) was to be ready for all of 2018 by the end of 2017, so in the last two months I have been working on lectures I won’t actually give until next fall. Today I put to bed the last one. It can slumber peacefully until I am ready to take another look, at which point I will see the weaknesses better than I can now, and will clarify, liven up and otherwise improve good lectures into what I hope will be excellent ones.

Like so many things, what one sees from the outside (Cruising! World Travel!) is the reward for what is not seen— the equivalent of the years of hard work that only shows to the public in the museum, or on the field of play. So  yes, my cruising life is a lot of fun, but also an astronomical amount of unseen “fun work.”

Now I will get a jump start on 2019 before  January 6, when I get one of my payoffs— the first leg of the Silversea World Cruise (Los Angeles to Hawaii to Tahiti).  Aloha!

 

 

I have always described myself as a percher. I am happy alighting on a branch and enjoying it for a while, then moving on. I remember as a child how these lines from Victor Hugo lodged in my soul:

Be like a bird, who, halting in its flight,

On limb so slight,

Feels it give way beneath him,

Yet sings,

Knowing he hath wings.

Sometimes my perch is not anything external, but a peace I have had to struggle mightily to find deep inside , and sometimes life  provides a landing pad  with runway lights and a restaurant that’s  open.

This ability to be okay anywhere has led me to take some big leaps in my life and I have come to another. In 2017, I was away cruising so often that I found myself feeling that, much as I love the little nest I have made in San Diego, it was empty a crazy amount  of the time.

I figured I could do one of two things. I could cruise less, or I could cruise enough more that I wouldn’t need more than temporary places to perch between stays onboard.

Guess what I chose?

Now that a sufficient number of my Silversea and Seabourn cruise assignments have been secured, I can announce that as of the middle of March 2018, I am renting out my condo for a year ( panoramic view of San Diego, one block from Balboa Park—interested?) and hopping from ship to ship with a little bit of time here and there in between to explore beyond port destinations.  These gigs through 2018 are on the calendar here, and the 2019 ones will be up shortly.

So now, I move to the edge of the branch, look around, and prepare to jump  I hope you’ll follow my posts on this big adventure

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today is Thanksgiving, and as I write, I am thinking about my blessings.  I want to put front and center anyone who reads this post. Thank you for being part of my life and for caring enough to pay a visit!  Gratitude for every blessing every day, and realizing how myriad they are, is the biggest life enhancer—and extender— any of us can hope for.  May we all come to next Thanksgiving with awareness of how much more richness this upcoming year has brought.

I am very excited about my first ever Alaska assignments as a cruise lecturer!  I will be doing back-to-back cruises next August on Seabourn Sojourn,  one from Vancouver to Seward (port for Anchorage) leaving on August 6, 2018, and returning to Vancouver from Seward, beginning August 17.

Wow!  What a learning curve, preparing talks on amazing people like John Muir and Jack London, and one on Gold Rush women. I’m also fulfilling a desire I have had for a few years to do a talk on the search for the Northwest Passage. And of course several of the most interesting and colorful indigenous cultures are in Alaska. And the Russians, and…and…..

Take a  few deep breaths, Laurel. You have time—

—Not. I am so loaded up in 2018 and early 2019 already that I need to get ready for next August now. Happy as a clam ( or maybe a king crab?) with this great new project. Actually I think I am probably a lot happier than mollusks and crustaceans. Hope you are too!

Seabourn Sojourn is a great experience. The lectures, six so far, have gone without a hitch. I have learned from five years of experience that a good turnout for the lectures is about 10% of the passengers, and I have been exceeding that, and the audience is growing, so those are both good signs. Today is sad, however, because the smoke from the Napa and Sonoma fires is thick all over San Francisco, where we are just docking now. I will need to stay on the ship, due to respiratory problems. Can’t risk losing my voice for the remaining three lectures. Feeling bad for those on the ship who have never been to San Francisco, especially those on cancelled wine country tours, but of course our problems are nothing compared to our fellow human beings in Santa Rosa and elsewhere, who woke up this morning not just to some smoke and inconvenience, but to the loss of homes and neighborhoods and,  in some cases, loved ones. Blessings on you, and all those still in the path of the fires. Will be thinking of you all day.