Captain Albert Schoonderbeek
After our midnight exit from the Bosporus we entered the Black Sea on an easterly course. We hugged the Turkish coast for the whole day as our next port of call Trabzon is located in Turkey in the South East corner of the black sea. Thus we followed the coast in a more or less straight line and depending on the contours of the coast it was sometimes closer and some times further away. It also gave us the chance to find out if the Black Seas was really black. Well it is not, it is more brownish. However the people who named it found the waters black so they called it the Black Sea. The Romans spoke about the friendly sea because of its fertile waters.
Due to over fishing and too many nutrients in the water and the fact that oxygen only exists in the upper layers of the sea there is not much fish left. However we saw dolphins today; the smaller version with a grey brownish skin color. For the rest we only saw a lot of pollution and debris coming by. Turkey is working very hard to clean up its waters and has issued a total ban on any form of maintenance on the ships while within 12 miles of the coast. If the rule is not followed then a $ 40.000 fine is levied. In 2001 when I was in Istanbul with the Noordam (III) I almost got such a fine although the ship had done nothing wrong. We were loading fresh water from the shore side and the engineer on duty was a little slow in closing the valve when the potable tank was full. When that happens the water goes back overboard through an over flow pipe. In this case the pipe opening was on the dock side so for about 3 or 4 minutes we were happily spraying local Turkish drinking water over the Turkish dock. When the bridge officer saw this he notified the Engine Control Room and the valve was at once closed off, but the authorities had seen it. This was near midnight, hence our suspicion that they have spotters on the docks. It took me a long time to convince the authorities that spraying the dock with Turkish drinking water was not really a form of pollution. In the end they relented but they were not very happy, maybe because they missed a good fine.
To make things easy for everybody, I have just banned all outside work while we are in Turkish waters and ports. It is the easiest way of dealing with it. With 400 crew onboard a simple order, of no water, no paint, no cleaning, NO Nothing, works easier than trying to explain what would be allowed. The only problem with four Turkish ports in a row and six days in Turkish waters is that the windows get dirty. Sand accumulates on the decks and the appearance of the ship gets less with the days. Three days from now we are in Sevastopol, the Ukraine and there we are still allowed to do deck washing, unless the rules have changed. Thus we can give the Prinsendam a good scrub. It has not been raining either in the past days so sailing through a rain cloud could not be done. The Turkish ships are rally suffering here as they cannot do anything at all as long as they sail in Turkish waters and quite of few of them, looked like rust buckets while the age of the ship did not give any reason for it.
My day was filled with parties. It was the gathering of the “most honorable society of Holland America Mariners” for the cruise and on the Prinsendam that means that everybody is invited to one of the two lunches as everybody is a mariner. In between we have the medal hand out and today we had 52 people who made the 100 days and a few with a higher number. On 750 guests that is almost 10%. Several are way over the 700 days which is quite an achievement, two years on board, but if you do a few cruises on the Prinsendam, it soon adds up.
Tomorrow is Trabzon, which is a fairly new port on the Holland America calendar. It has not yet been visited by many cruise ships, so HAL with its Prinsendam is a trail blazer.
The weather is going to be beautiful again. I just hope that this one day at sea was enough for the guests to recuperate from the intense experience, which was Istanbul.
To access Captain Albert’s historical writings on Holland America Line as well as photos and additional information about Prinsendam and his sailing schedule, click here.
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