30 September 2011; First Day at Sea.

As the Navy was either tied up to the dock or playing outside, the sail away from San Diego was un-eventful and so it continued for the remainder of the evening and night. Until the Mexican border we sailed with a max. speed of 15 knots, to comply with the Clean Air Act of California. This is not compulsory for us but all the ships are requested to do so and it is the HAL standard that we comply with any voluntary environmental initiative where safely possible. What is compulsory is that we run the ships on Marine Gas Oil (MGO) instead of on HFO (Heavy fuel Oil) in order to keep the emissions down along the Californian coast. As it well-known, Los Angeles had to deal with smog quite often in the past and the local authorities have been quite active with measures to reduce it. One of those measures is that ships sailing along the coastal area here, or going in and out of port run on MGO, as slower speeds give less emissions. Which makes sense, because when you arrive or depart from a port you are not going that fast, do not have maximum load on the engines and thus there is not always optimum combustion. Once past the Mexican border we set an average speed of 17.5 knots with an engine configuration that enabled us to sail with maximum efficiency and thus the least amount of emissions possible.

Now will be sailing for the next two days along the Mexican Coast until we reach our first port of call Puerto Vallarta. In between we will do a sail by past Cabo San Lucas which is always quite a scenic happening. The weather looks very good for at least the imminent future as post tropical storm Hillary has been moving fast into the North West Pacific, away from the American mainland, and the wind & swell that still goes with this system is running with us. That means that the ship is nice and stable and that is always a good way to start a cruise. By tomorrow that wind & swell should fall away completely and the temperatures should start to rise to the high 70’s. By that time we will have passed the “Cold Cape” as we call it, the south west point of the California Peninsula where the cold current that flows down from the north bends west wards into the Pacific. That means that the outside temperatures can really rise which pleases most guests as it is the warm weather that they are coming for.

I always like to start with a few sea days. Not because I have just joined and it gives me chance to get my house in order but because it makes everything so much less rushed. If you come onboard and the next day you already have a full port day, it means that you barely have the chance to unpack before you have to rush off to catch the shorex talk; get your clothing in order and to be ready by early next morning to run ashore and do the cultural thing. It is much more civilized to have one or more days at sea and have time to find out where the bar is and what the wine navigator package entails. At least that is MY foremost priority when I make a cruise.

So a quiet sea day today and that meant that the ships staff could have its staff meeting and coordinate some plans on how to approach our winter Panama Canal season. This cruise has a nice balance of port and sea days and that is ideal for the long term planning. So we discussed a number of standard things, such as long term maintenance and overhauls and our HESS inspections. I will come back to that in the coming days. For the rest I had to do some studying for the captains welcome toast. Surrounded by all new people and a new employee of the month meant that I had to quickly learn a number of names by heart and the little bio’s that go with it. Plus not having done the routine for the last 5 months meant that I had to focus on the happening for awhile to get it all in the right order and sequence. Tonight we will have our second hour forward and that will bring us on Puerto Vallarta time. When you have sea days you can do the time change any night that you want, as long as you have no problem with the fact that the sun does not rise at 0700 but at-08.30 or something like that. Thus we normally ask the hotel manager what works best for his operation with shows, buffets and other issues; and based on that it was decided to do the two hours in a row. One last night and one during the coming night and then nothing during the night before Puerto Vallarta. If we do not have sea days in between ports, then we do not have that luxury and the time change simply has to take place during that one night between those two ports. Occasionally I have stayed on ships time for a port call if that worked better but it is not company policy to do so. Some ships that sail from Miami on the 7 day Caribbean circuit simply stay on Miami time all the time and that works as well. However we do our time change tonight and as a result the sun will rise around 08.16 tomorrow morning.