the sounds of Half Moon Cay

December 16, 2013: Half Moon Cay
Half Moon Cay very possibly is my favorite day of this itinerary! It’s a lovely day at the beach, whether I’m working for half of it or I have the whole time to spend at the beach. Today was a half and half day. I got off at 8:15 with Christine for “island activities” from 9 to 11:30. We sat on the beach talking for an hour before a few of the kids showed up, we built a mountain and dug a hole and buried my feet for half an hour before they left, completely covered with sand from head to toe as they’d been rolling around in it the whole time. No one else came after that, so we hung out some more and then rinsed off the buckets and shovels, put them in the bag and dropped them off with a security officer on duty next to the ship (so they could dry out and so we didn’t have to carry them around).

So, we headed down the beach, and found Natalie’s bag saving three chairs for us, so we dropped our stuff off, then jumped in the water. It felt so good after having been in the hot sun and sand for the past two hours. After we cooled off, we headed towards the pirate ship to get a drink, a sunshine lemonade (lemonade and sprite). We met Natalie along the way, and when we got back to our chairs, we all jumped into the water and stayed there for a long time, chatting, swimming, splashing each other, splashing some of the HAL Cats that came over. We were in the water for over an hour before I decided I needed to get out and have a snack. I sunbathed for a while, eating the goldfish I’d brought with me. Alex and Philipo another HAL Cat hung out with me for a while, before they decided to go back to the ship before getting too much sun. Christine came back and went back to the ship as well to work on stuff for Christmas and to check on Ethan during his port day. So, Natalie and I were left on the beach, we had some fun photoshoots in the water, swam some and sunbathed for a while. It was a bit odd having so much time onshore on the beach there, I got so used to my time there being rushed. I really enjoyed getting to spend so much time there.

Onto the sounds of Half Moon Cay day. First thing in the morning, the first and second tender are full of crew members going to work and the early-rising guests. There are few sounds on the ship; the creaking of metal, the metal on metal of the ramp from ship-to-tender, the quiet and tired voices of crew members making small talk waiting to get on the island, the trilling of the computer as everyone is scanned as being off-ship. The tender ride contains the waves, the slightly louder voices of passengers as they excitingly make small talk with one another about their excursions or about the island itself, the waves as the tender gently makes its way through them.
At work on the beach, we could hear families calling to their children, water running down the slides, the scrape of plastic shovels on the sand, children rolling in the sand, adults pulling beach chairs into the water, lifeguards blowing their whistles telling people to take the chairs out of the water and, of course the kids laughing as they tried to bury our feet in sand while we kept wiggling our toes and breaking the piles of sand on top of us.
Just laying out on the beach. There was the faint hum of the ships engines, the louder roar of the tenders motors and they traveled back and forth, the occasional perfectly-timed breeze, leaves of trees rustling with the wind and birds, birds chirping, the fans turning inside the cabanas, the splashes and yells of a family as they played Frisbee in the water, waves calmly making their way to shore, bits and pieces of conversations all along the beach, the music from one of the large cabanas, the HAL Cats playing in the pirate ship just a little further down the beach, and if you listened closely and it was quiet enough for a few seconds, the horses way down the beach as they were lead into the water for a tour. So many little sounds combining to make the feeling of Half Moon Cay a perfect day on the beach.
We got back and relaxed until dinner and work. For some reason my day on the beach had made me crave pizza, so I ended up eating 4 slices, and a few pieces of fruit for dinner. For a formal night, the lido “fishbowl” was crowded with officers (not in formalwear though they should have been as it was after 6), and the usual suspects: casino staff on break, a few shoppies, the random HAL Cat during one of their short breaks between sets, the Location Team, and of course Club HAL. We actually ended up having to sit elsewhere because our usual table in the fishbowl had been taken over by officers. It was a bit odd having so many people out eating on a formal night.

Work wasn’t too bad, Under the Sea night went well. We made a sign for the night, decorated seahorses, played River/Bank, and played fishy 4 corners. They wanted to be active tonight, so River/Bank and 4 corners lasted an hour just themselves! All the kids were signed out by 9:45, nice because that gave us time to clean up and change before our present-wrapping party. Christine told us at dinner that we would be wrapping all the kids presents in the OB at 10 with a few other volunteers. It was quite fun! We put on some Christmas music (until other people came in and changed it), took over the back room and worked together with some of the cast members, the librarian and the party planner to wrap all the presents we’ll give out to the kids on Christmas day. It was definitely a team effort, we only had a few rolls of tape, and over 200 things to wrap. At first we were all cutting paper and wrapping, then I decided to turn it into a more assembly line thing, so I measured and cut the paper and made a pile for others to grab from and wrap the tween presents with, while someone else did the same with the teen presents. We finished in about an hour and a half, with only about 8 of us working! After we finished, we got Natalie to leave her teens and help us carry everything back to the closet to lock it away until the day of, then we all went back out to the bow and just talked for a while. It was a warm night out, the moon was bright so we couldn’t see stars, but it was too nice not to stay out for a while