The company has changed the cruise schedule for this season compared with last winter by adding the port of Puerto Vallarta North bound as well. That means that we will not have an evening stay in Huatalco de Santa Cruz any longer and it also means that now we have two high speed runs in our schedule. Sailing from Puerto Caldera to Huatalco and from Huatalco to Puerto Vallarta. So today we are sailing with the pedal to the metal towards Hualtalco also because I do not know exactly how much speed we will lose while going through the Gulfo de Tehantepec. There is a depression building up in the West Caribbean again and that means that by tonight it will start to blow again in Gulf of Tehantepec. At the moment I am forecasting about 45 knots of wind there; but it will depend on how early it starts whether the seas will have had time to build up and thus give us a wobbly crossing. That will all happen between 03.00 and 08.00 tomorrow morning and the time it starts depends on the angle of the wind axis coming from the main land. We will prepare accordingly for it, as explained in previous blogs, but it should not affect the guests very much.
What did affect the guests greatly, or could have affected them, depending if they were joining in or not, was the kick off of the “Greatest Cruise Sale on Earth”, or better the Greatest Cruise Sale Afloat”. Every year there is a cruise sale on all the ships linked to North America and it coincides more or less with the start of the new cruise year. All the brochures are out, and the cruise companies are getting in high gear to fill the ships for the coming year.
Our wooden Statendam in the chocolate locks of Miraflores.
Apart from this sales drive on board each ship, there is also an internal competition inside the Holland America Fleet about which ship organizes the best party to mark the occasion. For the crew there is a $1000, — to win for the crew fund and that really gets us going. Our future cruise consultant team, Thom and Tina Faulkner, decided that our theme should be the Panama Canal and thus the creative focus went that way. I asked the navigators to prepare a chart of our route as one of the prizes to be awarded and then the thoughts went to what should be the eye catcher of the whole happening. Normally the kitchen makes a cake with something on it, but we wanted something better this year.
The creative team on the stage with the unveiled model.
Thus we decided on a ships model in the Panama Canal Locks. Our carpenters are always afraid that what they make is not good enough, so the small model we asked for turned into the size of a rowing boat. A large scale model of the ship sitting in a pastry delight that made up the Miraflores locks of the Canal. The carpenters made the model, the sailors painted it, the beverage department made deck furniture out of champagne corks and then the culinary team built a complete lock around the model from pastry, chocolate and marzipan. I insisted that all these crew members would be properly recognized for all this extra work, so we decided to have them on the stage during the unveiling of the model and what would be the official kick off of the Cruise sales week.
Tina Faulkner on the stage giving a overview of what special deals there are during National Cruise Vacation Week.
With a lounge full of guests we had the official opening at 10am. The event will roll on for the whole week with various activities, promotions and raffles, to drum up as many bookings as possible.
Welcome to the greatest show afloat. Officers welcoming the guests into the Showroom at Sea.
In the evening we had the Official Ball to open the cruise week, with all the officers present for the meet and greet at the entrance doors to the Showroom at Sea and then for opening the first dance. Now we have to wait to find out what the other ships are doing and to see if we were good enough to win the $ 1000, — for the crew fund.
Dance the night away. This is what cruising is all about.
Although we had a full house, I only stayed a short while as I expected to be called out during the night when the Tehantepec wind was starting to blow. In Hualtalco itself it will be wind still, sunny and thus a very warm day,
October 22, 2012 at 8:26 pm
nice – MS rotterdam had similar sale but only end of season of norway and batic – which i went on in september