05 December 2018; Civitavecchia, Italy.

This morning all the Shake-downers disembarked and the ship prepared for its revenue earning cruise. They hopefully had a nice cruise and the ship had a nice chance to test everything out, so we can give the coming guests the best possible service. We started to receive our first fare paying Holland America Line guests at 11.30 hrs. this morning; and we will start our first cruise.

We are following in the foot steps of the Grand Old Lady of Holland America. Here the Rotterdam V is leaving on her official trial trip/ hand over on 20 Aug. 1959. Photo was taking outbound while passing an inbound ferry. Same as we are doing in Civitavecchia, only the ferries here have Batman cartoons as hull color (see yesterday’s photo)

I have been thinking about “first” cruise. We have already done a shakedown cruise or preview cruise so is this really the real first cruise? I personally think it is as this is the first cruise where the ship is used for its intended purpose; e.g. providing fare paying guests with a great (Holland America Line) experience. Pre view cruises or Shake down cruises or travel agents overnights/nowhere cruises or official /hand over trial trips have all happened in the past and sometimes long time in the past. The new ship was taken out to sea for one or more days to be shown off to relations of the company and/or to those who would be instrumental in helping the ship pay for itself. Then the ship would start on her maiden voyage.

It saves a considerable number of miles by cutting through the islands, instead of sailing south of Sardinia.

And thus we are starting today on our maiden voyage. We will be travelling from Civitavecchia and sail through Strait Bonifacius (just after midnight). Bonifacius or Boniface is a fairly wide strait located between Corse (or Corsica) and Sardinia. It is quite scenic but on our route towards Cartagena we will pass through it during the night time.

There are only small villages on either side so there is not much to see once it is dark. For a ship it is a good time to go through there as the local ferries are asleep and also are the large numbers of sailing boats who enjoy the strong winds here but without too much of the swell as there is good shelter under the coast. Once out we continue sailing south of the Balearic Islands into the West Mediterranean towards Cartagena. From there to Malaga, Funchal and then onwards to Fort Lauderdale.

A bit reminiscent of the old Trans-Atlantic days when the maiden voyage would also be a voyage to the new world. We are not doing exactly what Holland America did in those days as we are sailing at a much lower latitude; to stay in the nice weather as we are a cruise ship and it is December.

In the old Trans-Atlantic days this route was called the “Lido route” named so as in summer and in winter it had nice weather to sit outside. While on the North – North Atlantic route the passengers were huddled in deck chairs with thick blankets, bracing the weather, and looking forward to the 11 am. soup on deck. In those days the Lido route was monopolized by the Italian company’s sailing from Genoa and Naples. Famous names as the Conte de Savoia, the Rex and later on ships such as the Michelangelo and Raffaello made the route very popular and provided good weather until (in winter time) they were coming closer to New York.

Our first cruise / maiden voyage to the New World.

We will keep the sunshine option all the way as we are going to Florida. Hopefully we will stay in the good weather all the way as well. And the very long term forecast looks very good. I just did a 190 hrs. swell simulation on the internet (http://www.stormsurfing.com/cgi/display.cgi?a=natla_height) and it looks like we are going to skirt the high swells. I look most of the time at swell as that makes the ship move. A strong wind by itself is not much of an issue for a ship. It might make the ship lean but against that we can ballast and keep it straight up. Also swell only comes from bad weather so if you see the high wave & swell patterns you also know where the storm is; although the storm normally stays further north while the swell ripples down over a large area of the Atlantic Ocean. A ship such as the Nieuw Statendam only starts to move a bit when the swell goes well over 10 feet and it looks like……… if the weather patterns remain the same………….. that we might just touch the 12 feet. That is very good for December and thus I think we are going to have a very good crossing based on what I see now.

So here we are, about to sail on our newest Holland America Ship the ms Nieuw Statendam and ready for an adventure of a life time. 14 glorious days to look forward to with a ship that visits a number of beautiful ports but which is also a destination in itself.

Weather for tomorrow: Sunny with temperatures of around 15oC / 59oF. There is a disturbance building in the Golf of Lions south of Marseilles but we stay south of Ibiza and also we should out run it before it even becomes an issue.