Juan, our tenor sax player, leaves for home in Argentina on Sunday so there was a “corridor party” for him last night. We sealed off our corridor by closing a firedoor, and then opened up our cabins – a kind of corridor-wide open house in our part of the ship.

One cabin had the booze in it, another had the US election tuned in on the TV, and mine (unfortunately) had the music going. The party started after work, around 11:00, and continued until about 4:00 a.m. This was a bit late as we had to get up for an immigration check in the morning, but, what the hell.

It started a little slowly, as parties do, but picked up as more people arrived. The orchestra members were all there, of course, and a couple of the sound guys and a few female friends of the orchestra. After 1:00 a.m. the guys from the rock 'n' roll band and a couple additional chicks came over too.

A lot of the talk was about the election. Not that many of the crew on the ship are Americans, so those that there are are getting an earful about what the rest of the world thinks about the election, and especially George W Bush. The American crew members are, so far as I can tell, all anti-Bush. Of course, it's different above among the guests.

But a lot is different above. For one thing, the weight of the average guest is quite a bit more than the weight of the average crew member. I don't think there's been a study on this, but there doesn't need to be. All you have to do is look. Many of the guests are so massive that they bring their own personal transporters with them in the form of motorized carts.

But I digress.

The party was for Juan, and it was good. I got to hear a lot of shipboard lore, and funny or tragicomic stories about other musicians and entertainers making a living on the ships. I got the lowdown on the variuous acts we have to play for, the absolute worst acts, and the musicians' ranking of the various musical directors and cruise directors. It's a real community out here, a music and entertainment subculture I never suspected existed.

We had the corridor closed to prevent noise from bothering other people. Closing the firedoor would not keep security people from coming in if they felt a need to. But the party was not too loud, and the musicians, at least, did not get overtly drunk, which is a tribute to them. After all, the booze is extremely cheap here (duty free) and nobody has to drive anywhere. Very little stands between sobriety and drunken bliss. There's a 0.4% blood alcohol restriction, but they don't check you unless there's trouble.

So when trouble arrived in the form of a drunken Welshman, Wayne, there was cause to be concerned. We could all get tested if he caused trouble in the corridor (there are cameras everywhere on the ship). Wayne was accompanied by a Slovenian he works with. I missed his name, but he went far beyond the call of duty to save Wayne from himself.

The Slovenian got Wayne down from the guest decks into the crew area where he'd be less likely to be discovered by security or a wandering officer, or to offend a guest. When he arrived in our area, Wayne's eyes were mere slits, and everything was “#%*! this” or “$#%@ off”. I don't know why the Slovenian continued to look after him with the verbal abuse he was getting from Wayne, but he did. I hope Wayne thanked him in the morning – he probably owes him his job.

I saw the Slovenian guy at dinner tonight, and congratulated him for staying up so late to babysit Wayne, who really didn't deserve it. I'm glad I did. I met another interesting and decent person on the ship. We sat out for awhile back on deck 5 aft and talked about life as the ship pulled out of Charlotte Amélie harbour in the deepening twilight.