19 November 2011; At Sea.

It is about 780 miles from Puerto Caldera to Huatalco de Santa Cruz and therefore we had another glorious day at sea. Almost wind still weather and that meant that on deck it was just pleasant due to the breeze created by the ships speed. The rain eased nicely off during the night and we had a bright and sunny day. That the rain moved away was not so much due to the rain itself as the fact that we were sailing away from the shore line. In this area the coast arches away from our course line as we sail on one straight line towards our next port. Only tomorrow morning around 0900 we will make landfall again when we come close to Huatalco. In the meantime I am keeping an eye on the weather. The wind in the bay of Tehuantepec is still diminishing in strength and that means that tonight we should not have much of a problem. I warned the guests, especially those on the starboard side who could face the full brunt of the wind if it is coming, to prepare the ship for bad weather. But it looks good, at least for Tehuantepec and I do not expect the winds to go above 40 knots this time.

So today was a very pleasant sea day with the guests going through the daily program and picking out their items of interest. Behind the scenes things are basically routine as well as it is a normal sea day. One of the routines that the guests never see, is something as simple as folding the towels. When they are washed and dried they are collected in big trolleys for storage. Then there comes a moment when they have to be folded before being put back in use again. We have a large ironing and folding machine on board in the ships laundry but that is mainly used for the sheets and other thin materials. If you send fluffy towels through an ironing machine, they come out flat and I mean really FLAT. So for fluffy towels we still use manual labor.

Each morning a large group of housekeeping attendants assemble in the forward crew staircase and spend about 1.5 hours in folding large, small and medium towels and the towellets for the restrooms. This is a good job for Indonesians as coming from a very social culture with close family ties, where everybody knows everything about everybody, a good early morning natter with the whole group is most enjoyable. Then if you get paid for it as well by the boss and do something constructive at the same time, you come close to the perfect world. When all towels are folded, they are taken by one or two GPA’HK’s (General Purpose Attendant, House Keeping) to their final destination. In the same way we have these roving GPA’s going round collecting used towels from the various stations during the day. It saves the cabin stewards valuable time by not having to go up and down to the laundry all the time.
GPA’s are members of the house keeping team who do not have designated functions. They operate under the leadership of a foreman housekeeping and they perform a myriad of jobs. Apart from cleaning the public and crew area’s, they are placing tables everywhere for public functions and resetting public spaces for various events.

Additionally they are our vanguard against the Noro Virus. Holland America has strict protocols for dealing with this nuisance with a lot of emphasis on preventive action. That means that on a regular basis the ship is “fogged” during the night with a chemical that isolates any trace of virus that might be out there. These chemicals are not harmful to human beings but it is done during the night time as it creates a sort of mist that hangs for a while before it settles down. The chemical works on the principle of encapsulating the virus and thus eventually killing it off. That way the use of poisonous substances can be avoided.

The results are very good, however the norovirus has many strains and some of them can be quite virulent so even the best precautions taken by the ship might not be enough. Hence our constant emphasis on the participation of the guests in this battle. It is always around somewhere and if the guests can help it from spreading, then it is controllable and does not become a problem for everybody.

This is the time of the year again that the norovirus is the most active and thus we are all super-alert to any indication out there. Thus the captain will keep announcing: “Keep washing your hands please, wash often and with water and soap, for as long as it takes to sing “Happy Birthday to you” not the first line, but the whole song please.
However we have no issues on the Statendam as of yet and thus we can live our day to the fullest. Tomorrow at 10.45 we will be at the pilot station for an afternoon and evening call at Huatalco.