As is not unusual when going to Belize, the local weather was different than predicted. Most of the time the forecasters are quite good in predicting the rain. That is something you can see on a satellite photo. However they are wrong on a regular basis with the wind. We had the prediction that there would be little wind in the morning and increasing breeziness in the again. However when we arrived at the pilot station, it was blowing about 30 knots and it remained windy for the whole day. Sunny, warm and very windy.

When it is windy, the ship starts to yawn behind its anchor. This happens because the wind pushes against one side of the ship and the ship starts to drift. The anchor is there to prevent that so the anchor chain comes taut and pulls the ship back. This causes the ship to change its angle to the wind and the wind then blows against the ship on the other side. As a result the ship continuously veers from far to left of the anchor to far to the right of the anchor pushed by the wind.

The problem with this ships movement is that half the time the tender platform is exposed to the waves caused by the wind. If there are waves along the platform then the boats will bob up and down alongside it and that is dangerous for our guests and might result in an accident. To avoid this ships movement we switch on the stern thruster. We angle the ship so that the wind blows on the non-tender platform side; the chain comes taut and keeps the bow in place. By having the stern thruster push the stern of the ship against the wind, we can find a balance between wind direction and thruster direction so that the ship remains under an angle that just gives shelter to the tender operation on the lee side of the ship.

In the old days, when ships did not have thrusters such as the old Statendam (1958-1982) and Rotterdam (1959-1997), they would swing all day long and at set intervals when the ship was swinging through the wind again, tender service had to be stopped as there were too high a waves along the tender platform. Once the ship came back the tender service would continue. It depended a bit on the insight of the officer standing on the platform to optimize the time available for getting guests on and off the tenders while the ship swinging the right way providing sufficient lee.

I got many a wet uniform while standing half on the platform and half in the tender, helping, and sometimes lifting, guests out of the moving tenders and trying to get the tender away before the ship swung back through the wind. The older ships had many good things, things that we sometimes miss on the more modern vessels but I am still grateful each day to have a ship with a stern thruster so we can protect the gangway operation from the elements.

Thus we kept the stern thruster going all day in Belize, while the fast shore tenders ferried our guests to and from the port. The port itself is too shallow for larger ships to dock. We use these shore tenders as they are much faster then our ships tenders. This is a necessity in order to cover the large distance between Belize port and the anchorage area. We were today together with the Grandeur of the Seas at the anchorage, which had a similar operation going.

Tomorrow we are going to be in Santo Tomas de Castilla and the prevailing wind is supposed to be from the South East. If that is the case, then there will be no wind in the port as it is sheltered from each direction except the North West and thus it is going to
be hot, very hot with a high humidity.