24 April 2008, Acapulco.

Acapulco is still one of my favorite ports on the Pacific West coast. It is nice to sail in and out of; and the town is located right on top of the terminal so there is no fuss with shuttle busses and taxi’s to take to get somewhere. The only thing that can spoil the fun is a swell running into the bay that makes the ship rock alongside the dock.

We approached the pilot station around 06.30 with an official pilot boarding time of 07.00 hrs. I had built in a bit of lee way as you never know where the Acapulco pilot boards. It depends mainly on the fact if the boat is working or not. I have seen them coming out in regular pilot boats, in fishing boats and once in a real canoe. The latter one happened when a hurricane put the regular pilot boat and the senior pilot’s private boat on the beach. It was a bit of an unusual sight to see a regular canoe coming out peddled by two people and the pilot standing in the middle waving a big Mexican flag to attract our attention.

This time the pilot was in his regular boat and came all the way out of the bay as it was nice weather. I have known the senior pilot here for years and he has the good grace to let me continue to navigate the ship and assists with guiding the lines men on the dock and keeping fishing boats out of the way. For the rest he likes our coffee and drinks a lot of it. “Strong coffee for a strong pilot”, the whole deck department knows the saying and the quartermaster concocts a coffee potion in the morning that only he likes to drink. I have a strong suspicion that the bo’sun is using the rest of the coffee to grease the lifeboat wires as the stuff is really thick.

He also solved the mystery of a cruise ship at the cargo pier and a car ship at the passenger pier. The cargo ship, a car carrier was not there yet but they had started parking new cars on the passenger dock. There are two Nissan car plants close to Acapulco, one in the city of Pueblo and in Cuernavaca. The finished cars are then transported to Japan. Sounds to me as if they are carrying water to the sea but it seems to make economical sense to do so. The carrier was coming after the weekend to pick up 2000 cars and to get those on board quickly the new cars were already arriving at the dock. Thus I had more or less the whole pier for myself but as there was a little bit of well running alongside the dock, I decided to go in as far as possible. That meant for the guest a longer distance to walk but at least there would be no accidents due to a moving gangway.

So we sailed into the bay during sunrise and docked accordingly. By 8 am. the gangway went out and a stream of eager shoppers rolled ashore. It was another very warm day as the sea breeze that was blowing, came from the North West and was stopped by the mountain range around the city. We did not stay for the evening as the schedule to the next port, Cabo San Lucas was too tight and sailed out of the port at 5 pm. The pilot preferred to leave inside the bay, as the swell was increasing near the entrance and that give me the chance to build up some speed before the ship came outside. For the ships stabilizers top operate properly you need a ships speed over 10 knots and now I could switch them on before the Veendam came in open waters.

For the next 36 hours we will sail along the coast of Mexico and will cross the Baja California. Arriving at Cabo San Lucas the day after tomorrow. That will be the final port for most of our guests as about 700 are leaving in San Diego.