Sisters woman loves life at sea

Amy Cretsinger's sea legs are finally adjusting back to dry land after returning this summer from a six-month contract on Norwegian Cruise Lines' Norwegian Gem. Cretsinger is a kids activities director aboard the luxury liner, coordinating activities for a navy of miniature sailors with ages ranging from 2 to 17.

"Working with the kids is a lot of fun," Cretsinger said. "And sometimes you get very attached and sometimes you're very happy when the parents come back to pick them up. In general, kids on a ship tend to get seasick a lot."

The recent trend in cruising has been to remove formality and bring on the fun, with less restrictions on dress codes and the addition of water slides and ice skating rinks on many newer floating amusement parks.

The Norwegian Gem was delivered in 2007 by shipyards in Germany.

It's a stylish, 15-deck, 965-foot-long behemoth emblazoned with bold gemstone graphics along its hull and able to carry up to 2,400 passengers to exotic destinations around the globe.

Graduating from Sisters High School in 2003, and Weber State in 2007 with a degree in exercise science, Cretsinger was looking for a job where she could travel. She applied online at NCL's corporate Web site for a youth counselor position, since fitness jobs were harder to get, and was hired.

"We do all sorts of things: storytelling, arts and crafts, have pizza-making parties," said Cretsinger. "For the older groups we do different themed scavenger hunts and go to the entertainment shows. We have dance parties, play basketball, go bowling or rock climbing. The younger kids have fun programs like pirate night where they get dressed up as buccaneers with face painting, and ends with a big treasure hunt on deck, walking the plank and singing pirate songs. The passengers love it. It's pretty funny."

For this last voyage, the Gem started out in New York on a Caribbean tour to Puerto Rico, Antigua and St. Martin, after a month switched to the Bahamas, then did the transatlantic crossing, ending in Venice.

"I'd heard these horror stories about giant rogue waves so I was prepared for the worst, but it ended up being very smooth," Amy said. "Once we got to Venice we did an alternating run: Split, Croatia and Corfu and Santorini, Greece, then Mykonos and Iraklion, Crete. The next week we'd do Dubrovnik, Croatia, an old historic walled town with amazing buildings and architecture.

"In Athens we saw the Acropolis and Parthenon. Then on to Izmor, Turkey and Nafplion, Greece and back to Venice to do it all over again."

The intimacy of shipboard life creates bonding among the crew.

"With 1,000 crew members, you have instant best friends," Cretsinger said. "There's 65 different nationalities employed, with different cultures. I shared a room with a girl I work with. It had small bunk beds, a mini-fridge, desk, bathroom and a TV. Most of the time you're at work and you get used to being in a small area and being creative about where you keep your stuff."

This past November, Cretsinger was working aboard the Norwegian Dawn returning to Miami when they lost all power for nine hours straight - no engines, air conditioning, no water or toilets.

"We were just floating dead in the ocean. It got so hot in the buffet there was a cloud of condensation from the humidity," she remembered.

The ship had to do an emergency reroute to Puerto Rico and docked there for repairs.

"Our job was primarily to control the crowd as passengers disembarked, trying to be cheerful. We stood at the staircases in full uniform, dripping with sweat, using paper plates as fans. After the ship emptied we cruised back to Miami at a snail's pace. We basically had our own personal cruise."

Cretsinger's next odyssey ships out October 2, when she'll join the crew of the NCL Spirit. She'll be flying to Quebec City and doing alternating runs between Boston and Quebec.