This is always an early arrival, as the full day fly tour to the Maya ruins of Tikal takes off at 6 am. The port is located in the corner of a shallow bay so it takes a long time to get there. Not because of the distance but because of the shallowness of the water.

One of the phenomena of a ship is, is that when it starts to make speed; it sinks deeper into the water. This is called squat. It depends on the hull form of the vessel how much it is squat will be. Also the faster the ship sails, the deeper it settles into the water. For the Veendam it is about four feet with a speed of 10 knots and it goes up to almost 15 feet at full sea speed. With larger ships you can not see it very well but if you look at a speed boat that is speeding up, you see the stern, where the outboard engine is, digging itself into the water and much of the stern disappears below the surface. When the speedboat slows down, the more level and the higher the stern rises.

For Santo Tomas it takes about an hour to get to the dock, traveling at a speed of 10 to 12 knots and thus limiting most of the squat and so the reducing draft. Apart from making sure that we do not touch the bottom, we also have to keep some space between the keel and the bottom of the bay so that the water can flow under the keel and we can move forward. Because of this water flow, it makes no sense to go to fast, as the water can not flow away from the bow quickly enough and as a result prevents the ship to increase speed. I tried this a few times to show the junior officers but while sailing with10 to 15 feet under the keel the ship simply did not want to faster than 12 knots whatever power I gave to the propellers.

We picked up the pilot at the entrance of the fairway and then sailed with 10 knots through the channel. It is one straight course of 188o until about ½ a mile from the dock it ends in the harbor basin where the ships can turn before lining up and sail outside again. By 06.00 we were docked and 06.05 the tour was on its way. We were in port today with the Club Med II, which is a resort ship and a sister of the WindSurf which until recently belonged to Holland America/Windstar. Windstar is now part of Ambassador Cruises which owns a number of small passenger company’s including the paddle steamers, Queen of the north and Queen of the West.

Santo Tomas is a very well organized port. Everybody is in a distinctive uniform and what is announced is also happening at the time that was announced. These are people I can work with. I often wish we had this sort of, near German, work ethic in more places and ports in the world.

We pulled out on time, and in a hurry, as the stretch to Cozumel is a very tight one and I would need all engines on line to get the maximum speed out of the Veendam. So, when an hour later we came off the shallow areas, we put the throttle forward and started to fly.
And then suddenly the weather changed…….. More about that tomorrow.