14 Feb. 2015; At Sea.

Today we had Valentine’s Day and the ship tried to celebrate it as best as possible. All the Ladies received a rose during dinner and a few activities were themed in that direction as well. The only challenge the Hotel Department had was that Feb. 14 happened to be the last day of the cruise and then it is very hard to get the guests motivated for an evening of partying as everybody is more concerned with packing and solving the problem of how it is possible that the suitcases are suddenly too small.  It is a well-known fact that during the cruise your clothes start the shrink and get tighter and tighter the more you come towards the end of the cruise. However suitcases are doing the same; and normally with the same ratio as the number of ports the ships visit and people go ashore to visit. Some suitcase manufacturers have tried to alleviate the problem by having extra zips sewn in but that does not solve the issue. So the guests tend to retire early to solve the insolvable and proof comes the next day when we see a much more hand luggage carried off the ship than was carried onto the ship.

To keep the guests as long as possible in the ship the company has come up with a very clever idea; Happy hour. Drinks for half price. Everybody likes a bargain and we do see bar traffic increasing during these periods. Even more so during the last evening when there is the extra challenge of finishing off the drinks card from the cruise. I walked past the Ocean Bar last night and there was a man sitting at the bar with 4 bottles of beer in front of him. Making sure that there was no credit left on his card. How he got home after 4 beers was something I did not want to find out.

While sailing towards Tampa the question for the captain is: will there be “very low hanging clouds” in Tampa Bay. If that is the case then the Harbor Master is closing the port as it is too dangerous to go through the last part of the voyage, Sparkman Channel. It is quite narrow and on the North Side there are numerous fuel barges and docks and you do not want to hit those.  Rule of thumb is then to try to make it to the pilot station by 23.30 and to get past the Sunshine Skyway as soon as possible afterwards. The clouds normally start to descend after midnight and as soon as you are in the channel, there is no other option to continue as the fairway is too small for turning around and anchoring in the fairway is also not really appreciated.

Then you have to hope that the clouds are lifting around 4 am. If not then the ship is re-directed to East Bay where you can then dock at the old Holland Cruise Terminal. In case of this emergency guests who came by car can then be bussed back to the regular terminal. I always liked that terminal as you did not have to go through Sparkman channel but the authorities wanted to have the cruise terminals closer to town and thus we have to go through Sparkman Channel.

However the Captain could sigh in relief as the weather forecast did not indicate any nastiness. And so we did continued with our regular speed, enhanced by a push of the Gulfstream to arrive as scheduled. We will be first in the channel as we have to go to the terminal deepest in the port, followed by Norwegian Sun who parks in front of us and lastly followed by the Carnival Glory. The last one is restricted vessel, so big that no opposing traffic is allowed to pass as it takes up too much of the channel. The Glory docks in the turning basin at the Garrison Terminal and will be the first tomorrow evening to leave again.

I did my best to give the guests a good memory of the cruise by doing my Holland America History lecture and then spent the rest of the day on paperwork preparing for the next cruise. Tomorrow morning the ship should arrive around 06.00 near the dock or so and then by 08.30 we should be well on the way with dis-embarkation.

Weather forecast for tomorrow, chilly, with a bit of wind, but sunny and dry. There should be no reason why the guests from this cruise should not be very happy campers as we had good weather all the way.

Note: For those who are interested in how the light weight ship survey turned out ? Well we do not have to go on a diet or start dismantling part of the ship somewhere. We were well within the acceptable tolerances for the safe stability criteria.