Cuba forms a natural Northern boundary for most of the Caribbean Sea and as it consists of one island you either go around it on the west side; Cabo San Antonio or the east side at Cabo Maisi. For us going to Tampa it means the west side, using the Yucatan channel and keeping Cabo San Antonio to the East. As all ships have to do something similar it can be – sometimes hair raisingly – busy at the Cape and thus the Wise Men of the IMO have introduced a Vessel Separation System for this area. The IMO (International Maritime Organisation) is a sub organization of the United Nations and is tasked with regulating the shipping world. A task which gives headaches as each member of the UN wants something different and once something has been decided it takes a minimum number of member states to ratify it before it can be implemented worldwide.
Approving new Vessel Separation Schemes is often one of the easier problems to tackle although also here the bickering can be intense about having the boundaries one inch to the East or one inch to the West so to say. Still, most of the time it goes fairly smoothly as everybody see’s the logic in trying to prevent collisions. It saves lives, it saves headaches for the adjacent Country and it saves money for the ship owners. Before the VSS was there, things would go “bump” on a regular basis with ships because when they came around the Cape they simply kept doing their own thing; which was not doing anything, and even then a very large body of water can suddenly be very small.
Thus the VSS are there now, how to deal & comply with them is stipulated in the Rules of the Road or Colregs and since then the number of “bumps” or worse have been greatly reduced. More and more of these VSS areas are appearing around the world all with the aim to reduce collisions and the often secondary effect of Environmental Catastrofies.
When the Ryndam sailed through the VSS which is a Vertical North / South system west of Cabo San Antonio early this morning there wasn’t much of a chance of a “bump”. One lonely ship came south in the other lane and for the rest there was nothing to see. Just the sky, the sea and us. If you are on the extreme eastern edge of the VSS you can normally see Cuba but it being slightly hazy today, made sure that Cuba remained a mystery.
This is my last day on board, tomorrow I will be transferring to the Noordam. The plan was to fly to Samana in the Dominican Republic but that was not easy as it seemed and thus I join in Willemstad Curacao.
There will be plenty of work to do while waiting for the ship to come in, as on the Noordam I will be running the Induction class for new officers, similar to the ones I blogged about in November /December last year when on the Rotterdam. This time we have 6 deck officers and 6 engineers who will be looked after by our Retired Chief Engineer Mr. Dullaert.
Also in Willemstad there is a Maritime Museum which I have not been able to visit yet and I hope that they have some information about Holland America when the ships called there in the 1930’s during the early days of cruising.
So in the coming days my blog entries might be a bit intermittent until I have settled in on board the ms Noordam.
March 2, 2015 at 5:33 pm
Thank you Capt Albert. One can only imagine what would happen if Cuba opens up to the cruise industry and how it will re-define the typical and “tired” Eastern and Western Caribbean itineraries and re-kindle interest in new Caribbean itineraries involving Cuban ports for those of us who have” been there-done that” several times in the past.
Best regard, and good luck on the Noordam……..Ruud