8.8

Yesterday I had more training in the morning. I thought I was finished and didn't have any today, but late last night I ran into a girl who is a new sign on like me and she informed me that we had it at 800. Bummer. But at least I found out about it because I was planning on sleeping in a bit and would have missed it! I went to the training and then headed to the broadcast room to begin working with Tim.

We went up into the satellite domes on the outside of the ship to check their conditions. There is one dome on each side of the ship aft. The domes look like giant golf balls sitting on a tube and inside there is a big satellite similar to one you might see outside of the a TV station. The domes just protect them from the elements. We had to unbolt a cover and then climb through this little access hole inside the base of the tower. Then we climbed up a ladder until we reached a floor inside the bottom of the dome. It was insanely hot inside and Tim decided the Spa should allow guests to climb inside the dome as part of a Spa treatment.

After climbing into both satellite domes, we did some various work in the broadcast room. After the ship set sail around 1700, Kurtis and Val went hunting for the skid that had the Sony boxes on it. Whenever things are brought onto the ship the I-95 is lined with skid after skid of supplies until they are each put into their final storage spot. They finally though a skid that had a bunch of tools on it but also included our new cameras!

When they brought the boxes back to the room we quickly ripped everything open and began charging the batteries because we had to shoot something in a few hours. The new equipment is really nice and it literally looked like Christmas in the broadcast room. We received two new cameras, weather enclosures, really awesome LED camera lights, enough batteries to shoot for weeks without plugging in and some adapters that will allow us to mount various lenses. I signed onto the ship at the right time!