letter from the Captain

Yesterday I got a letter from the captain -- from two captains, actually.

The man who has been captain on Holland-America's world cruises for several years is unable to continue this year due to family medical situations. He wrote to apologize to those with whom he has sailed before, saying how much he had looked forward to sailing with them again and wishing them a good voyage.

The man who will be captain wrote to say how delighted he is to be sailing with us and how much he's looking forward to, yada, yada, yada.

But the exciting thing is the information about the new captain. He's British, for one thing, but the really cool thing is that he's been a seaman for 43 years and a captain for 25. He's sailed on British Merchant Navy vessels, cargo ships, and ferries as well as several Holland America line ships. I am entranced with the fact that he didn't just enroll in cruise ship captain school and graduate with arrogance and class entitlement. (Occupy Portland is only six blocks away, the spirit is getting to me.) I (unrealistically) imagine him hauling ropes and clambering up masts to unfurl sails and maybe even occasionally saying "Arrrh" -- no, wait, that's pirates. But you get the idea.

"Any mariner would be delighted to sail in such a great variety of waters -- Antarctica, Polynesia, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Suez Canal." This is a man after my own heart.

Can it be that this is actually going to happen in just 54 days, 5 hours, 26 minutes, and 48 seconds?