Day 133…
The alarm went off at 5:30 this morning.
Ordinarily, that means that I would be heading to the airport. This morning it just means that the movers are finally coming to pack up my Aussie friend’s apartment. It’s the first time I’ve needed the alarm to wake up in months.
In pre-COVID-19 days, I usually traveled somewhere between 150-175 days a year. This is, by far, the longest I have been in one spot almost since I can remember. I always to try and be on the first flight out when I’m flying because everything from getting to the airport to checking in is easier in the early morning hours. Early flights are also far less likely to get delayed. Otherwise, I’m not a fan of the early morning hours.
Of course, now that I have walked the thirty blocks to be here in my friend’s apartment, the movers are nowhere in sight and the number I have for them won’t go through. Ah well, what else do I have to do today?
A couple of years ago, we installed Jersey Boys onto the Norwegian Bliss, a gigantic cruise ship. The Bliss can accommodate up to about 4,500 passengers and has a crew of about 1,700 people. The theatre on board seats more or less about 1,000 people.
Maritime law prevents anybody from working on board a ship for longer than 11 months without taking a leave. What the entertainment division does, therefore, is to contract everybody involved with the show for six-month stints.
Because the show performs in international waters, the company can be from anywhere in the world. Our casts have come from England, Australia, South Africa, Canada and the US. Our band and crew from countless other places in addition to those. Nobody is allowed to do consecutive contracts, but if you do the first contract you can come back for the third or fourth if you like.
About four weeks before the performing group’s six months comes to an end on the ship, we go into rehearsal with a new group in Tampa. Norwegian Cruise Lines has a great entertainment facility there. We rehearse in a studio for four weeks and then we head off to the ship for what is called the install. The Bliss’s itineraries are usually Sunday afternoon through to Sunday morning. So, for the install week, the old group departs when the ship docks in its home port on Sunday morning and the new group gets on Sunday afternoon. There are not enough cabins for there to be any overlap.
Jersey Boys performs a total of four performances a week - two performances a day for two days. During the install week, those performances are set towards the end of the cruise on Friday and Saturday. We have the early part of the week to tech the cast in. Of course, there are all sorts of other things going on during that week in the theatre - another show does its two-day schedule, there are guest lecturers and performers, movies, bingo, shore excursion meetings, you name it. The passengers have no idea that the cast and company are switching over during their cruise, to them it just seems like a normal cruise. We work around all of that stuff out of sight.
Norwegian had been hoping to start cruising again at the end of September, but we all just received word that now the earliest that cruises will start up again is going to be the end of October.
I don’t think that this news is at all unexpected, but regardless it is going to be a blow for many people on the ship and off. The Bliss ports in Seattle during the summer months and cruises up the Inner Passage to Alaska and back. Over the course of the week, it docks in Juneau, Ketchikan and Skagway in Alaska. All three of those towns are only accessible by boat or by plane. There are no roads into them, they are completely cut off.
The overwhelming majority of the income of those towns comes from the cruise ships that dock there and spend money. What those towns have is access to some of the most spectacular scenery on the planet and salmon. That’s about it.
October is the end of the Alaska cruising season. Whether or not the cruise ships start up again at the end of October is now moot for the good people of Alaska. If the ships do start up again, they will do so on their winter routes. For the Bliss, that means the Caribbean. Nobody will be cruising to Alaska until next season.
The other place that the Bliss stops at on its Alaskan cruise is Victoria in Canadian British Columbia. Putting COVID-19 concerns on a cruise ship aside for the moment, that, I am guessing, more than anything else, is why NCL is not going to be cruising in September.
In 1920 a federal law that regulates maritime commerce called the Jones Act was put into place. The Jones Act was enacted to stimulate the shipping industry after World War I. It is named after the Senator from the state of Washington who proposed it, Wesley Jones. Washington has a huge shipping industry and the act, in effect, gave the state a monopoly on shipping to Alaska.
Under the Jones Act, cargo freighted between American ports can only be transported on ships built, owned and operated by American citizens or permanent residents. This applies to both people and goods.
To avoid paying US taxes, most cruise ships are registered elsewhere. NCL’s fleet of ships are registered in the Bahamas. So, to comply with the Jones Act, they need to be careful with their itineraries.
Foreign ships can embark passengers at one US port and disembark them at another, but only if the ship stops in a foreign location along the way. In other words, when the Bliss cruises between say Los Angeles and Miami, it has to stop in places like Cartagena, Colombia and Mazatlán, Mexico along the way.
They can also start and end at the same port in the US and visit other US ports, but only if they also call in at a foreign port as well. So, on our Alaska cruise, we start and finish in Seattle, call in at the three Alaskan cities but ALSO call in at Victoria to satisfy the Jones Act. If people depart the ship without doing this, the ship is fined per-passenger. Ships have to be careful that anybody who gets off at a stop along the way also gets back on.
One of the consequences of this act, besides, making it difficult for cruise ships who are trying to avoid paying US taxes, is that US protectorates like Puerto Rico end up having to pay much higher tariffs on imported goods. There are so few US registered ships that the demand for them is high. High demand equals higher rates which are passed on to the consumer - in this case Puerto Ricans. It was calculated that because of the Jones act, there were almost $1.2 billion dollars of additional costs to the island last year which works out to be just under $400 per resident.
Last week on July 16, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada announced that the US/Canadian border will remain closed until August 21 with additional extensions possible. The Bahamas announced that as of today, all inbound commercial flights from the US are prohibited. Grand Bahama is on a full 14-day lockdown since yesterday and its borders are closed to all foreign traffic, sea or otherwise.
So, I guess none of us are going anywhere for a while until we can stop in a foreign port of call.
Some of the Jersey Boys company members in other countries seem to be faring better than we are and some, far worse. The South African cast members, for example, are not eligible for unemployment as part-time gig workers. They have had absolutely no income at all for the last several months. They would very much like the option of getting back on the boat.
At a televised briefing on Tuesday, the President FINALLY acknowledged that the coronavirus pandemic is growing worse in the United States. He has been saying that the hotspots around the nation were just “embers”, but on Tuesday he admitted that they were “big fires”. He also said, “It will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better”. He has finally recommended to the country that everyone wear masks, saying that he was never against them.
This is not a man who is admitting that he’s wrong. There were no health experts at this briefing. This is a man who is up against an economic wall and sees no other way out.
The President and the Republican Senate are now at odds with each other. The President wants a large payroll tax cut, which means even less revenue for the country which horrifies the Senators. The Senators want more money for coronavirus testing which horrifies the President. He is still holding fast to the utterly inane idea that if you do less testing you will find fewer cases. The Senators are also deeply worried about the size of the new spending bill and are looking for things to cut that won’t cost them the election later this year.
Meanwhile, all of the PUA payments stop either this week or next. All of this governmental fighting over the spending bill means that a huge section of the country is going without funds until it gets sorted out. We, the people, are going to get desperate and unruly very quickly.
“What the hell are we doing?” asked Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.
What, indeed? We’ve all been asking that question for months. The Government has NO plan.
There were 57,777 new cases of COVID-19 reported by the CDC yesterday. That is well more that the combined population of all three of the NCL Bliss’s Alaskan port cities. At this rate, we will hit 4 million cases nationally in about 4 days.
It took New Yorkers roughly two months after we shut down and all started wearing masks for our case numbers to drop. If everyone across the country starts listening to the President today and begins to practice social distancing and following safety protocols, we may see our numbers go down by the end of September.
One little speech after months of railing against it, though, isn’t going to cut it. For our numbers to go down, we need a massive, concerted and unified national plan.
I don’t see that happening.
Countries are not going to open their borders to us, until we get our shit together. Ted Cruz running around screaming “What the hell are we doing?” does not really paint a picture of a country with its shit together.
The movers are here. They are amazing. I love watching people who know what they are doing. I don’t care if it is Greg Louganis diving, or these guys packing up my friend’s stuff. Skill is immensely appealing and mesmerizing.
They are like a well-oiled machine. Efficient and thorough.
Shouldn’t we expect the same from the people we have chosen to lead us?
Whenever we do get back to the Norwegian Bliss, there will still be the issue of the virus, itself. The whole industry has a difficult path ahead of it given how much negative press it received at the beginning of the pandemic. Like every other industry, they are giving it a shot. Whether or not the passengers return, remains to be seen.
Like every other industry, though, they need our leadership to get us through this. They can prepare, sanitize and market the living heck out of their product as much as they want, but none of it will mean a thing if the Government of the United States cannot get this virus under control.
I probably don’t need to say “wear a mask” to anybody reading this, but I’ll say it anyway.
Wear a mask.
Is it really that hard?
thank you for the
Bliss Tour
I can imagine
the scenary of Alaska
and taste the Salmon
as I am dancing listening to the voices if The Jersey Boys...
that
can you actually believe
I, a Jersey girl
never saw...
and believe
I will again
I wear a mask
love taking care of myself
that’s
my plan
I am trusting as I do my part
and my
art
A plan will
unfold
People say I’m a dreamer...
xx