With the movement towards cooler weather there comes the moment that we change from white to blue uniform. This is a decision that is solely made by the captain and nobody else and is based on his personal take on the matter. If a captain favors a particular uniform he might hang to Whites but in general the moment is gets too chilly for the white material to keep warm in, the switch is made.

So after looking a few days ago at the 10 day weather forecast for Victoria, it was easy enough to see that it was going to be chilly, very chilly. While the ship is at sea the sort of uniform is not as important as most of the time is spent in air-conditioned spaces but when in port it becomes an issue. Therefore at 6 am. this morning it was time to change to blue uniform. The 6 am time is chosen so that the coming watch and the hotel day shift shows up in blue at 8 am. and the off going shift, still in white, is gone by 8 am. The two hours between 6 and 8 are a bit of a muddle as nobody is on exactly on the same time schedule for starting work but as there are hardly any guests around at that time, it is not much of a problem.

By 9 am. we turned into Strait Juan de Fuca. I was expecting a predicted ebb-current, slowing us down but as the wind and swell had been westerly in the past days, the whole current pattern was out of kilter and we had 1.5 knots with us instead of 1 knot against us. Thus we arrived nice and timely at the Victoria pilot station and the pilot stepped on board exactly at the requested time of 2 pm.

It is only a short distance to the dock but an ignorant fisherman had decided to run his nets right across the fairway. I am saying ignorant as he probably did not realize the cost he might incur to damaged nets if a ship would plow through it. We do try to avoid cutting through nets but it is not always possible to go around them, due to traffic, water depths or other circumstances.

This time the fisherman was in luck, the pilot wanted to make a wide approach to the dock anyway and thus we could sail around the nets with a wide curve. If we hit a net it is more of a problem for the fisherman than for us, as we have knives on the propellers that will cut all the netting apart.

There were two other cruise ships in port, the Oosterdam in the berth next to us and the Celebration Infinity in the berth opposite the Oosterdam. The Volendam could be heard making noises on the VHF as they were in drydock in Esquimalt which is a mile to the West of Victoria. As the two big boys occupied the middle pier, the Veendam had to dock at Ogden Point South which is the most difficult berth to get into. Especially when it is windy. Today we had only 10 knots on the sb beam and I was not unduly concerned about that. So a 1000 feet from the pier, the pilot handed the conn back to me and with a slow speed we floated into the dock space, keeping the breakwater about 200 feet to the starboard of the ship and the dock about 15 feet to the port until we were in position.

We were supposed to dock at 15.00 and we had at 14.59 the gangway out. How about that for timing. Two minutes later a steady stream of eager shoppers and sightseers swarmed ashore to enjoy Victoria on a chilly but sunny day.

The ship was scheduled to sail at midnight heading for our final port of call Vancouver and at 11.45 pm we raised the gangway and let go the lines. We will be docking at Vancouver Canada place West at 07.00 hours tomorrow.