And then the fire alarm went off. For no apparent reason several smoke detectors in the ship went off at 9 am. in the morning. Thus as per company policy I raised the fire alarm and assembled all the teams. Within 3 minutes we knew that there was nothing wrong so the question was; what is going on? Answer: Moisture in the air. With the warm weather outside it does not take much extra moisture to reach a saturation level in the air that triggers a smoke detector. It is the principle they are working on. A smoke detector does not sense smoke it senses a change of particles in the air. Regardless of whether it are water or smoke particles. In this case it was caused by an engineer doing some maintenance work on a water distribution line. Smoke detectors are set for the average conditions of the ship. If you have a smoke detector in your cabin and you shower with the bathroom door open; the smoke detector will go off and a friendly bridge officer will call you to ask if you are oke. We have the same thing sometimes on the Amazon cruise, with the suite cabins, if the guests decide to sleep with the balcony doors open.

So I made my announcements to advise all the guests about what was going on but it was rather annoying that it happened because a maintenance man was doing his utmost to repair something quickly and then set off a number of smoke detectors as an unexpected side effect.

An issue that each captain struggles with is how to make effective announcements. How to reach everybody and how to make everybody understand what is happening. All senior officers on board HAL ships have gone through Crisis Management and Crowd Control training. There we learn something about the background of human behavior in times of crises and it gives some interesting facts. When something happens, 70% does not react at all. Approx. 20% wants to do something, 5% is going to do something and 5% panics. These are rough figures and vary a bit depending on the sort of research that has been done but the averages do work out in these big differences.

Now with making announcements, repeat announcements, you reduce that 70% and encourage the 20% and the 5%. The panicking 5% is then normally reduced as well as they will take a lead from that 25% that is now following the orders that are given……. but not always.

The biggest problem is to get the correct message across to non-ship people even if they have sailed on multiple cruises. Rule one, is to provide good and timely information in small doses so people have time to digest it and project it to their personal situation. In such a way that if they hear the word smoke detector; their eyes will go to the ceiling and they will recognize the white disk with the little red light on it and understand what it does. As a lot of people do ignore announcements or talk straight through it, multiple announcements are needed.

However if you make too many announcements it looses effect. Hearing the same message repeated all the time results in complacency which is dangerous because then they might miss something important. To get it exactly right is something that we struggle with all the time and we never get it completely right. There is always somebody who will lift a phrase out of context and runs with it. If that results in a complaint that is fine, we can deal with it.
By explaining the bigger picture on a one to one basis always clears up the misunderstanding. However if this particular person is among that 5% who is the panic group, then the announcements might have the opposite effect of what was intended.

As every politician can tell you, you never get it right for everybody and you can only do your best. So I made my announcements and only one complaint came in about how we dare to sail with a faulty detection system. The opposite of reality.

Reality was also Cozumel; docking with 25 knots of wind and 3 knots of current. These are docking maneuvers that give captains grey hairs. I have lost most of my hair already so I can probably avoid the grey bit but it was not easy today. However the sun was shining and the guests had a good time and that is the only thing that counts. What was difficult on arrival was easy on departure. By using the blow-a-way maneuver, we were off the dock and on the way to Tampa within five minutes. As the USA goes to winter time this weekend, we only have one hour forward on the clocks and that should please everybody as well. Tomorrow we are at sea and hopefully that strong wind will finally die down.