9.6

Every time we have an all crew drill one side of the ship's life boats go down in the water for practice. This week it was my side of the ship's (starboard) turn to go down. The night before someone told me a story about a cable snapping while lowering a lifeboat and the whole boat rolled over, so I was a little nervous about the drill, but I know that accidents rarely happens so by the morning I had forgotten about it. 

Four other crew members and I loaded into our lifeboat and prepared to descend. The arms above us extended out to swing the boat over the water and then we lowered 60 or so feet into the water. After splashing down we unhooked the huge steel cables holding the 150 person lifeboat and then used oars to push away from the Serenade as we fired up our engine and motored away. The Serenade looks huge when you're up against her side at water level looking straight up. As we began to move out into the harbor, Captain Karen radioed us and told us to maneuver over to another lifeboat and tether to each other, as we would do if we had to move equipment from one boat to another. So we did as we were instructed and then contacted the bridge when we had successfully attached ourself to the other boat. After we completed the exercise we came back along side the Serenade and were hoisted back up to deck 5 where we hopped out of the boat before it was raised into the ceiling for storage. Mission accomplished.