READY, SET, SAIL
106 | July• 2019
Noah’s Ark.” Industry insiders often
call this operation ‘organised chaos’.
Becce shakes his head and recalls
that when he started with Carnival,
a ‘big’ ship had 350 staterooms and
maybe 800 passengers. The Carnival
Horizon, the firm’s newest ship,
has 1980 staterooms with room for
3960 passengers, while the world’s
largest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean
International’sSymphony of the Seas,
has 2759 staterooms and a maximum
capacity of 6680 passengers. “As ships
get bigger, we have to work faster
and smarter,” he says. “We are always
running to keep in place.”
Becce pauses to answer one of the
several phones and ship’s radio he
carries with him. As the point man for
turnaround day, with 22 departments
reporting to him, he is in constant
demand. “That was my group coordi-
nator checking if we could schedule a
customer party for this evening.”
His ship’s radio buzzes and he gets
an update on how the porters are
doing offloading the luggage from this
week’s cruise. To speed up the turna-
round, passengers had to set out their
luggage, more than 15,000 pieces,
the night before for offloading to the
nearby terminal this morning. “So far
so good,” he sighs. “But we’re behind
schedule due to a change in our itiner-
ary that got us to Miami a bit late this
morning. We’ve got to make up a half
hour or so. It could be tight.”
Every second counts and delays
can have serious repercussions. If
departing guests are not offloaded, or
‘debarked’ on time, oncoming guests,
who start boarding around 11am, will
be delayed. As Terry Thornton, sen-
ior vice president of Carnival Cruise
Lines, earlier explained to me, “Delays
can upset embarking passengers and
can cost us money. The sooner a guest
embarks, the sooner he or she can
start their vacation and spend money
aboard our ships.
“And if the ship leaves late and has
to speed up to reach its destination on
time; that can cost us more fuel.” Adds
Becce, “There are five other Carnival
ships at the port today; if we don’t
make our 4pm departure slot, we will
lose our place in line and could be
seriously delayed.”A
lthough theMagicdid not
tie up until 7.30, the port’s
terminal was abuzz with
activity throughout the night. More
than 20 18-wheeler trucks were off-
loading food and supplies onto fork-
lift trucks ready to load them onto
theMagicthrough its port side cargo
doors as soon as it arrived.
Security teams, including sniff-
er dogs, scan – and scamper over –
everything that is due to be onloaded.
Also, before the hundreds of pallets of
food is loaded onto the ship, executive
chef Wellington Dias or a member of
his team checks it to make sure it is
not spoiled. An inventory manager
keeps careful count of the food and
beverages. “We don’t want to run