READY, SET, SAIL104 | July• 2019their thousands of pieces of luggage),
clean the ship, and take on new pas-
sengers (and their luggage), as well as
a week’s worth of food and supplies.
“Incredible, isn’t it?” says Donato
Becce, the ship’s hotel director and the
person responsible for overseeing this
logistical tour de force. Becce, an affa-
ble, 53-year-old Italian and a veteran
mariner, confesses that even he is
amazed at how the crew and shoreside
helpers – more than a thousand
people altogether – turn theMagic
around so quickly and efficiently.
“Think about it,” he says as we walk
down I-95, dodging pallet jacks piled
high with stacks of everything from
prawns to lobster to champagne to
light bulbs and new mattresses. “Over
the next hours our crew will change
the sheets and clean 1845 passenger
cabins and bathrooms. They will also
clean the entire ship, load a week’s
worth of food and supplies onboard
and welcome our next cruise’s 3690
passengers. And we do this every
week, 52 weeks a year.”
As theNew York Timesonce noted
about turnaround day, “Getting
everything ready in time is part
NASCAR pit stop, part loading ofI am deep in the bowels of the eight-
year-old, US$740 million cruise ship,
standing on Deck Zero, which runs
nearly the length of the 306 metre ship
and is strictly off limits to passengers.
It’s also known to the crew as ‘I-95’,
because it is said to be as busy as the
famous US interstate highway of that
name. (German-flagged boats call this
deck, ‘theAutobahn’. )
Today, I-95 lives up to its name.
It’s ‘turnaround day’, when the
crew readies the ship for this week’s
cruise, and I-95 is buzzing with peo-
ple hurrying by. Some are carrying
cleaning supplies, others are push-
ing carts piled high with rubbish to
be recycled, still others are rushing
to help wherever they will be needed
today. Workers drive scores of small
forklifts or ‘pallet jacks’, and zip in
and out of storerooms as they deliver
food and supplies that have just been
loaded from the port.
Everyone who passes by me has the
same determined look on his or her
face. There’s no time for small talk on
turnaround day, the busiest day of the
week for this army of workers. In the
next eight hours or so, the crew will
offload departing passengers (and PHOTOS: JASON NUTTLEI
t's just past 7.30 in the morning, and theCarnival Magic,
one of Carnival Cruise Lines' most popular ships that
regularly plies the Caribbean on week-long cruises,
has docked minutes ago at its home port in Miami.
Passengers on the ship’s 15 accommodation decks are
just beginning to disembark.