From UnCruise to Silversea

Wilderness Discoverer next to Silver Muse in Ketchikan

Putting it into perspective

The Expedition Team

   I recently accepted a job as expedition leader with Silversea, an ultra luxury mid size cruise ship company. With close to 1,000 destinations visited by their fleet around the world and new challenges in store I was eager to set out on this new adventure. However, I was also quite sad to be parting ways with UnCruise, who I've had so many great experiences with over the last 4+ years. Luckily some of my uncruise crew mates are coming along for the ride as well.

View of the top deck

Silver Muse in Tracy Arm Fjord

Docked in Haines, Alaska

  My first rotation with silversea starts in Tokyo, Japan and ends in Vancouver, Canada. It will encompass four voyages. The first being a transoceanic trip from Tokyo to Seward, Alaska. I flew out to meet the ship in Tokyo where for the first time ever I was greeted by an agent before even going thru customs with my name on a sign. He whisked me through customs and sent me right to the hotel. Apparently cruise companies fly their staff around the world on these special tickets called 'seamans fares'. These are very reduced rates that you need a special booking agent to get, but it also means that you aren't allowed to come early and a local agent must make sure you get from airport to hotel to ship. I suppose in the past they may have had a problem with defectors? The last time I was in Japan outside of an airport was when I lived here from 2003-2005. Driving through Tokyo, past Odaiba towards the waiting Silver Muse brought back a lot of memories from that time in my life.

  But make it to the ship we did, and you should have seen all of our eyes. This was a big ship. During the interviews we had heard mostly about the expedition ships in the fleet that top out at around 240 passengers. This was a big ship. I came to find out that the Muse can handle close to 600 guests with around 400 crew. My surprise continued when we got onto the ship and found out that no one really knew what we did, because there had never been expedition staff onboard this style of Silversea ship before. I quickly found out that what my and my team of 9 expedition members were there to do was to figure out and implement a brand new program that had never been done before at this company.

  Its going to be a wild ride. We have a very nice floating home to house us as we hopefully rise to the challenge. Luckily the team is solid, I've worked with about half of them before, and the rest of the staff are delightful.