en route to Sydney

Rigelio our cabin steward

At breakfast this morning we were greeted by the usual ‘Hello Ma’am; hello Sir’ from every passing waiter. One pleasant waiter made the mistake of greeting a sad sack of a passenger close to our table and had to endure a 15 minute expose of the passenger’s life, his medical condition, dangerous foods and super-foods (Yoghurt is one if you want to write it down) and the main reasons why at the age of (possibly) 60 he has never married. The waiter was a very diplomatic young man. I bet there are a few laughs to be had back in the crew’s quarters.

The breakfast waiters are the same ones as in the main formal dining room which wound down at around 10.30pm last night. They would have had another 15-30 minutes final clean-up before they were able to hit the sack then on deck as it were for breakfast. After breakfast there is just half an hour before lunch starts then afternoon tea and the evening meal starting at 5.30pm. Not much time for the crew to relax.

Food service is almost continuous from 5.30am until 10pm and then if you aren’t full to the regurga-tube you can order room service 24 hours a day.

Last night I asked several waiters if they were going to re-sign after their contract ended. All three said they are going to….one having completed 14 X 10 month contracts with P&O.

When U.S. navy ships dock at Fremantle on R&R the local newspaper often tells us that supplies taken on board include ‘4 miles of sausages; sixty tonnes of ice cream’ etc etc. The Pacific Dawn has a small brochure about such statistics. For example the ship has two water production plants. One is an evaporative system producing 92,000 gallons a day and the other is a reverse osmosis plant producing 480 tons per day.
There are other statistics about disposal of poo etc, but I won’t go into that here. On food and beverage consumption daily a couple of figures show that on average 3.125 eggs are consumed; 487 bottles of wine and 1.284 cans/bottles of beer. Vegetables weigh in at 1,798kgs. The gross weight of the ship is not diminished by this consumption as it stays on board as adipose tissue and sewage.