Thanks Andy - follow it all now.
In January 2010 we joined Blair on the OV for a leisurely 14-days out of Barbados. We had one of the company cabins under the theatre. Thoroughly enjoyed doing pax escort duties between BVI & Venezuela.
Charlie Carr & Sarah Breton were a lot of fun. Sarah then went to Artemis, and the OV later came down here to NZ as the Pacific Pearl.
At one stage Charlie even told me off for not appearing on the bridge often enough!
Photo attached, off Granada. I didn't like the bow graphics.
Also, Charlie & Sarah doing their comedy routine.
Cheers,
OV had originally been built in 1988 for Sitmar Cruise Lines as Sitmarfairamajesty, but was sold and actually entered service as Star Princess, a fairly good quality Princess ship with many balconys! Unusual for a budget cruise ship.
Despite my jokes about her she had a lot of good points, sadly the Security Officer's Cabin was not one of them!I had a bigger cleaning locker next to my cabin on QE2!
But one thing you couldn't run her down for was her food, it was excellent. We used to do 2 x 7 day round trips from Palma de Majorca on two different routes, but always the first stop was a port in North Africa to satisfy the EU reference taxes! Every 2nd Sunday we were in Barcelona where ,waiting for us on the jetty would be 6 or 7 Davies lorries from S'ton with out stores for the next two weeks, all British produce to satisfy our British passengers!! I once had a photo taken of my stood by a pallet full of Heinz Baked Beans, my children thought it was wonderful!!!
Also we had Sky Sports 'raw feed', which is what overseas TV companies get and then add their own commentary. So on a Saturday either in Ciivitavecchia or Monte Carlo, we had 'live' Premiership football at lunch time, in the afternoon and then again at 5.30pm!! Al these games were shown live in the Sports Bar onboard which was always packed! We used to joke that on OV, dress on Formal Nights was your teams Home shirt, while informal nights it was your away shirt!
There was also a cracking Wardroom on there, mainly made up of a few ex RN Tech guys, plus a sprinkling of P&O guys who had been on ships where a Wardroom had been and wanted to bring that across with them.
But my final abiding memory of OV must be 'children's tea'. This was a routine on embarkation day, which was every Tuesday in Palma alongside 0630, departure 'scheduled for' 2200, but normally midnight due to arriving charter flights being delayed. Anyway, Children's tea' was a Wardroom thing whereby at 2000 the galley would lay out a selection of 'kiddi food' chicken nuggets, sausages, fish fingers, baked beans, chips, English bacon, waffles and hash browns. Hmmmmm my mouth is watering just remembering it!!
So out of 10 how many would i give OV, for food 9, for general ship experience 5! For interesting ports 8.
