05 April 2008, At Sea.

The day started very nice with a lot of sunshine. The doom and gloom forecasted yesterday, with thunderstorms and all was nowhere to be seen. Thus the guests could enjoy a beautiful final day at sea.

As the weather had been so nice in the past few days in the middle Caribbean, the current that normally flows quite strongly under the coast of Cuba to the North West was now very weak and that meant that for part of the day I had to use five engines to maintain our schedule. If the trade winds are a bit stronger, then this current gives me an extra knot of free speed but this time it was sadly missing. Only when we came in the Gulf of Mexico, North of the Florida Keys, the regular current came back and pushed us nicely towards Tampa and off went engine number five again and we saved a bit more fuel.

I had set my ETA for Tampa Sea buoy for 01.45 am. what normally means that the ship is then docked by 05.45, so Customs and Border Protection can start clearing the ship at 06.00. This was not to be in the end as by 10 pm. the frontal system that had been predicted to pass by in the early morning finally came over the ship. It brought torrential rains and wind gusts of up to 50 knots which is about 60 land miles per hour. Luckily the wind was straight on the bow so the ship did not list as this can affect the stage show and it does not look very good to have the dancing ladies glide over the stage from one side to the other, or wheel chairs suddenly taking off by themselves. The passing of the frontal system took about 45 minutes and it will have at least pleased the chief officer as it washed all the salt of his paintwork. At a certain moment we could not see more than 100 feet in the rain. Thank God that the Veendam has state of the art radars. But it did slow us down and thus my planned ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) started to slip away.

An un-expected and also very un-pleasant happening was that while we were approaching the Tampa Bay outer fairway, we had suddenly again 50 knots of wind blowing around the ship. This time nobody knew where it was coming from and when the pilot station inquired with the Meteo office, their inquiry was taken with total disbelief. However as the Carnival Legend, who was just behind us, reported the same they had to accept the observation for true. So just while I was lining up the ship into the fairway, the pilot station postponed pilotage until the winds died down. The Carnival Legend, who was still in open waters slowed down, while I had to sail the Veendam out of the channel again and drifted with the nose in the wind waiting for things to improve. It did so after about 30 minutes when the wind came down to about 20 knots and them the pilot boat felt comfortable to come alongside. With making good speed in the bay and having the flood current with us, we docked in the end just 30 minutes later then the planned arrival time, so it did not interfere that much with the clearance of the ship. By that time the wind had died down so completely that it was dead calm.

As this happened in the middle of the night, the guests, all asleep in their beds, did not notice it, although a few might have felt a slight listing of the ship when I turned the ship through the wind into the fairway. According to my colleague it has been a very windy season in Tampa and although I missed most of it, being on leave, I did get my little share of it during this night.