It is not often that the seas are completely flat but that was what we had today, sailing South Eastwards along the Greek coast. The sky was hazy again with the now familiar brown tinge of Sahara sand in the air but with the sun shining it was a wonderful day at sea.

The biggest “island” of Greece is the Peloponnesus and we have to sail all the way around it to get to Piraeus. The Peloponnesus is an “artificial” island as it used to be a peninsula attached to the main land until they dug the Corinth canal, which effectively severed the peninsula from the main land. The Veendam is too wide for the canal hence we sail around the island. The same goes for many other ships and thus we see a lot of shipping on this route. All the traffic from the Middle East and the Black Sea that is heading for Western Europe follows this route.

In the late evening we came to a real bottle neck of traffic. The Steno Elafonisou. This is a 3 mile wide strait south of the Peloponnesus and North of Nissos Kithiron. You can also sail around Kithiron but that is five miles longer. Most ships in this area travel at speeds of 10 to 15 knots and going around would add at least half an hour to the voyage and no captain likes to do that. I always prefer to keep my options open. About an hour before entering the strait you can see on the radar quite well how much traffic there is and how it is developing. If it does not look good, then the decision can be made to take the slightly longer route. For a ship as the Veendam is only adds about 15 minutes to the voyage.

We have nowadays a very handy gadget to track ships. At least the bigger ships. It is called the AIS. The Automated Identification System. Each larger ship has a transponder onboard and that sends and receives information. That information is displayed on the radar screen as a little triangle. By clicking on the triangle the name of the other ship is displayed, its next port of call, the course and speed and it even gives anti collision information. It is a great help to get a quick overview of a traffic situation.

One has to be careful though, as its effectiveness depends entirely on the diligence of the navigator of the ship, in entering the correct data. This does not always happen and we have seen ships sailing towards Spain while the AIS indicates Turkey, ships arriving at a port three months ago and a whole host of other mistakes. As long as it is used as another aid to the navigation it is a great help but it is not something to rely on.

This time there was little traffic in the strait but instead we had to contend with a fog bank. What started out as a sandy haze developed in a full blown thick white wall of fog. People do not associate the Mediterranean with fog but after a warm wind still day with a cold current running along the shore, fog banks can develop in the late evening. Luckily it did not take too long, as it would have spoiled my nights sleep and I needed to be fresh for the mayhem that is called arrival Piraeus.

Once again a beautiful day to enjoy. Flat seas, no wind and clear skies. Temperatures nearly reached 80 today. Perfect day for exploring the sights of Dubrovnik. We are already planning for a next cruise in regards to this place. Two cruises from now, my regular dock will be taken by the Carnival Freedom, (see my blog of a few days ago) so the small Veendam will have to anchor and use tenders to shuttle the guests ashore. Part of the port is being refitted and of course that is just the area where we would normally park our tenders. So the chief officer was on a mission to find an alternative space.

There was one location that was workable and not such a bad place either. Right off the market square so there will be something for the guests to look at, when they are waiting for the tender to take them back. It is just a pity that the location can only accommodate one tender at the time, and thus it will all depend on the fact if all the tour buses return at the same time, whether there will be a waiting line yes or no. Trying to regulate the return of tour buses is not so easy, as their progress and schedule depends a lot on the traffic and congestion in the town.

The reconstruction of the port has to do with the increasing popularity of Dubrovnik as a cruise the port. Originally the dock followed the outline of the coast. That was fine as long as the visiting ships where not longer then 500 feet. But 500 feet is now a days only the lenght of a small (cruise) ship and angles in the dock create problems with getting the larger ships docked. Therefore there is now a project goingon in the port to take these angles out of the dock and that means that ships up to a 1000 feet can dock alongside and that gives room for two mega liners alongside with room left for a smaller ship behind them.

We left just before sunset and the sun gave a beautiful performance by sinking into the Adriatic sea in a hue of vibrant colors. Tomorrow will be asea day and again the weather forecast is great.

Although drizzle was predicted, it was a sunny day but slightly hazy. The weather here in the Med is very difficult to predict anyway. The sea is enclosed by land on all sides and that has a great influence. The Russian flatlands to the North, the Sahara in Africa to the South, the Arabian dessert countries to the East, it all makes it very difficult to discern a predictable pattern but as long as it is nice weather, you will not hear me complaining.

Today was also heavy loading day, and being Holland America Line, we procure a lot of items from Holland. They are trucked in with Dutch trucks to Venice and normally arrive the evening before, so loading can start the moment the ship is safely docked. All our supplies are palletized and once the stores are onboard we do not need the (wooden) pallets anymore. On the ship everything is stored on stainless steel racks to comply with US Public Health rules. So what to do with those 150 odd wooden pallets that we have left over every 14 days? We like to recycle as much as possible so throwing them away as garbage goes against the (Dutch) grain. If we keep them onboard they take up space and I consider them a fire hazard.

We found a solution but had to go around the houses for it a little bit. If we keep the pallets onboard, then they are considered garbage when we return for our next call. This means we have to pay for garbage containers and those perfectly good pallets go to the dump. That costs about 1200 euros’. If we want to recycle them we have to make sure that they do not go with the ship but that they are left behind when the ship sails. So we have found a local company that will come and pick them up, they charge us 300 euros’ to do so and they make their profit by selling them on. So we recycle and we save ourselves approx. 900 euros’ as well.

Today we were lucky with the fact that all flights landed on time and that the Veendam could leave on schedule. We save fuel by leaving as early as possible as it brings our average speed down, speed we have to maintain to get to the next port. For Venice I try to get out as quickly as possible as well for another reason; namely to see Venice before guest dinner starts.

I always get comments from the guests about the tugboat that hangs on our bow while sail through the port. Guests find it peculiar as they do not see a tug in other ports. The Veendam only needs a tug during very windy weather but Venice has a special reason. The local authorities require a tug as a fail safe. The thought that a big ship might miss the sharp turn off St Marks Square and plow into the houses, is too gruesome to contemplate. And thus we hook on a tug for 4 miles until we are past the old town.

Most people think about Venice as just the old historic town. But the area is quite industrial as well. Just past Venice is the town of Marghera which has petrol-chemical plants, container docks and a big shipbuilding industry. This includes the Fincantieri shipyard where the Veendam was built. As a matter of fact the Veendam was the first Holland America line ship built at Marghera. This was so successful that ever since all new HAL ships are coming from this yard.

The weather held and our moning call at Dubrovnik was a sunny affair. This is only a short port stop, from 0700 to 13.00 hrs., as it is such a long distance to Venice. I am always in a great hurry to leave because of that, while the guests are in no hurry at all to come back. So it was also this time, all our buses pulled up next to the ship in the last 45 minutes and that meant that it was a long row lining up waiting to be processed by security.

The summer season is slowly starting and that could be seen by the fact that each call we coming to Dubrovnik there will be more and more cruise ships. During our first call we were all by ourselves, during the second call there was one, during the third call there are four. At the fourth call again four, but now the first mega liner has arrived. Fifth call: four ships (including one mega liner) and at the sixth and our final call, five other ships including two mega liners and two big ships, altogether bringing ashore an estimated 12000 guests, not counting crew. During that last call we have the advantage that we are docked, so the transportation of the guests is at least not that inconvenient but it will be a busy day within the walls of the old town.

Another sign that summer is coming is the abundance of sailing boats around the coast. On the way from Dubrovnik to Venice we sail for part of our journey between the islands of the Croatian Coast. Those are fairly sheltered waters and thus a great area for sailing. That means for us sailboat dodging. Although sailboats also have to comply with the rules of the road, this does not always happen. Sometimes the sailboat skipper has no or just rudimentary knowledge about the rules, sometimes the occupants are too occupied with sailing to pay proper attention to their surroundings and sometimes there is too much of a party going on, on board. Thus we keep a close eye on all of them, including those who are keeping a distance, as you never know what might happen the next five minutes. I always hope that the skipper apart from knowing his Rules of the Road also applies common sense and simply stays away from commercial traffic. A 25 feet sailing boat is much more maneuverable then a 1000 feet tanker, so why insist of having the right of way, even if you have it.

Arrival Venice will be the end of yet another cruise. A few of our guests are staying for next cruise, when we sail the Eastern part of the Mediterranean. Quite a few of those leaving the ship will spend some time in Venice before flying home. Holland America offers pre and post cruise packages and I think they are money well spent. You have flown all the way over to Europe anyway, so you might as well get the most out of Venice while you are there.

It seems that we have left the rainy weather behind us for the time being as the forecast for the coming days is only predicting sunshine. Early this morning we sailed past Stromboli again, with its top covered in clouds, so not much to see and then we headed for Messina strait. In order to make the schedule to Dubrovnik I went for an early passage and by 7 am we boarded the Messina pilot. He seemed to have had a bad night as he spoke no more then a few words during the whole sail through. As we went through at nearly slack tide (time when the tide and the current goes from Ebb to Flood or vice versa) the strait was full of fishermen. Due to the layout of the strait with its traffic zones and crossing ferries we pass these fishing boats a less then a 100 feet but they do not seem to be perturbed by it all. They are just happily sitting there in their little boats, with their back towards a vast mountain of steel rushing by at 18 or 19 knots, just going about their business as usual.

The rest of the day was spent sailing around the southern side of Italy heading for our next port of call Dubrovnik. While the guests are enjoying themselves with all the shipboard activities they see little of what goes on behind the scenes. Holland America prides itself on its training program and part of that program is to get outside trainers on board whenever possible. This cruise we have two firefighting instructors on board from the Texas A&M School of firefighting. Although the officers onboard train the crew themselves, it is very good to have people come in from the outside. Doing that brings a fresh pairs of eyes to the shipboard routine and as the instructors go around the fleet it insures consistency on all the ships.

Thus this week there were training classes for the fire teams, for the cooks in the kitchen, for the traffic directors (those who guide the guests to their lifeboat stations) and for every other group involved in our safety sequences. We did a major drill while docked alongside at Naples as it is still one of the few ports we are allowed to sound alarms and make announcements. I set the drill for 09.30 with the hope that most of our guests would be ashore by then. As it was beautiful weather that day it worked out well. By 09.25 only 50 guests were left on board of the 1248 we have on the ship. We always have a few guests who have been everywhere and have seen it all and they simply stay on board and enjoy the scenery from one of the lounges.

We try to vary all our firefighting exercises, and as the guests were ashore, we could train on a few crew cabins located in the middle passenger area of the ship. The success of on- board firefighting lays in the fast response to an emergency. When an alarm comes in on the bridge, an officer is dispatched to check it out. This is called a first responder and he/she should be on the scene within two minutes. If the fire alarm has to be raised, the teams should be able to dress up in full gear (protective clothing, breathing apparatus and tools) in under four minutes and be on the scene within 8 minutes after the alarm has been sounded.

We then “set the box” which means the area is surrounded at all sides by the fire teams, to contain and then to extinguish the fire. Evaluation of shipboard calamities through history has shown that if you get your teams on the attack within 10 minutes you have a very good chance of “winning” without it turning into a major event. When the drill is over a debriefing takes place where the whole evolution is reviewed into great detail and notes are made to improve the next drill. Even if you have a well oiled machinery as on our ships, there is always something to learn and always something to improve upon. The moment you think something is perfect, you have to be careful as that will be the moment that complacency sets in and that is the first step to disaster. Thus we keep training, evaluating and trying to come with even more refined action plans each time we have a drill.

In the Dutch language we have a saying: To first see Naples and then Die. This refers to the outstanding scenic beauty of the Bay of Naples. The early morning approach to the port is indeed very beautiful. You have to the south the island of Capri and ahead of you the sun climbing above the horizon behind Mount Vesuvius. After a few days of rain and drizzle in the various ports, the sun was a welcome sight, with the promise of a beautiful day in port.

Naples is an important ferry port with connections to Palermo in Sicily and a lot of smaller fast boats going to Capri and Sorriento and thus we had to do our daily bit of ship dodging again. These ferries call in to the pilot station in Italian, local Italian, which does not help us one bit in finding out what their plans are. As a matter of prudence we normally line up behind them and make our approach when they are safely out of the way.

Some of the pilots come from these ferries and they can get very impatient with the careful way we tend to maneuver. Their idea of arriving is to charge full ahead into the port, swing around, give full astern and charge astern to towards the dock, hoping that their engines won’t fail at the crucial moment. They do fail sometimes and occasionally you see the most spectacular dents in near the waterline of those ferries. So I took my time as saving five minutes on a 12 hour day does not make sense to me.

We docked at the Naples passenger terminal which is a left over from the trans atlantic heyday of ocean travel. It was built during the years of Mussolini in Italy and is of a stark neo Bauhaus style. Similar to what the Nazi’s built in their years in Germany. It has two rearing bronze horses on the top and white sweeping steps leading up to the terminal from the town. The inside is a wonder of high soaring walls, marble floors and large spacious area’s. It is now only used as a cruise terminal, but for me it was wonderful to see that the old First class, 2nd class and 3rd class waiting rooms were still there.

I asked permission to walk around behind the scenes and see the operational side but as it was a Sunday no high enough authority was available to grant permission for that. We are going to Naples one more time, so I will try again then. Naples is one of the few ports where we are still allowed to do full maintenance, so the chief officer had a good day catching up with outstanding window washing and painting. We are still having problems with the sand in the air and the ship got a good hosing down today to get the sand out of the nooks and crannies where the rain from the past few days could not get to.

Sail away was after dark and our guests had a nice view of the lights of Sorriento and Capri twinkling on the horizon. In past we sailed between Capri and the mainland. There is a two mile wide passage but recently that whole area has been turned into a nature reserve and thus we had to sail around the island. Tomorrow is a sea day when we sail through Strait Messina, in the early morning, and then around the South side of Italy on our way to Dubrovnik.

From Monte Carlo to Ajaccio on Corsica is only a short hop and by 7 am we were at the pilot station after a very scenic sail away from Monte Carlo at 10 pm last night. Ajaccio is a major ferry port and as usual they go first so we had to line up behind the Ferry Napoleon Bonaparte and sail into port staying a mile behind this ferry. The ship docked in downtown and there was only the vast expanse of the ferry terminal to cross before arriving in the old town of Ajaccio. Corsica is of course the island where Napoleon was born and one of the ships tours visited his birth place.

We only only stayed for a short while here and at 2 pm, it was departure time. To get to our next port of call, Naples, we had to sail around the Southern part of Corsica, as Ajaccio is located on it’s West side. From there we passed through the strait between Corsica and Sardinia and those extra miles make it a tight schedule to get to Naples on time. The weather cleared nicely during the morning so we had a very scenic transfer through Strait Bonefacio. This area is of great natural beauty with National Parks on both sides of the strait. Apart from that there are a lot of ruins to see as well. In the past many a battle and skirmish was fought in this area and several old forts and look out posts remind of this.

Traffic here is regulated by a Traffic Control station that advises ships about local situations. This time we had a very French Lady on the VHF inquiring about the Pessanger sheep Eendamme and wanted to know all sorts of things for her records. Things got a bit complicated when it came to the name and nationality of the captain. Wass isse Utch, was country issa Utch. “Dutch is Holland” we came back. Ah Holland, Pays Bays verrrry goote. And ze name of zee captain ?? Then things got very complicated with my last name. After one vague attempt of trying to pronounce it, she gave up and wished us a Bon voyage.

Nowadays sailing through this area is quite simple, we have good radars, we can project the sea chart on the radar screen and with GPS as a back up we can stay nicely on the course line. The main thing the navigator has to do is keep a good look-out for traffic that might be in the way. Along the route we could still see the various navigation markers from the old days. Pyramids, which when in line with each other, would give clearance around a rock or a shallow patch. Also we saw old navigation markers that when in line with each other indicated the border between Corsica (France) and Sardinia (Italy). There must have been a time in the past, when it was not appreciated when one crossed the border here as these markers did not have any other navigational significance.

It takes about 90 minutes, at full speed, to get through the Strait of Bonifacio and then it is a straight shot to the Bay of Naples. The weather for tomorrow looks very good, so hopefully a lot of the guests will take the tour to Pompeii and Sorriento, as the city of Naples might be very much closed, it being a Sunday. Naples is a beautiful city to explore but I have warned the guests not to stray too much from the beating track. Naples was once known as the capital of the pickpockets and there still are quite a few locals working very hard everyday to retain that title.

This morning we had a bit of excitement, more excitement then I care for. In the early morning we approached the pilot station with a gentle breeze blowing from the North East and it looked a very promising day. We were scheduled to dock in Monte Carlo which since a few years has a semi floating dock that can accommodate two medium size cruise ships.

The pilot station is about a mile from the shore and so we were happily approaching with about six knots speed. The pilot came racing out in his boat and while he was approaching the ship, the wind suddenly started to increase to 30 knots, to 40 knots and then to 50+ knots. That is storm force. By the time he was on board and on the bridge, I had the “brakes” on and was making an abort maneuver. What was happening was that the Mistral had suddenly started. The Mistral is a local wind that can suddenly develop in the Rhone Valley of France and then build up very rapidly to storm force. A Mistral is normally not predictable and just happens. According to the pilot it only happens about twice a year in the Monte Carlo area and today we were the lucky ones.

An “abort” maneuver is something that is always in the back of the mind of a captain. When preparing for an approach, you think, what can I do if the approach does not work. What is plan B.? Monte Carlo has deep water all the way up to the coast so there is room to come quite close before it is too late but with 50 knots of wind blowing, a modern cruise ship drifts very quickly and a decision has to be made rapidly. So in this case, full astern, bow and stern thrusters full to port and use the wind as a friend instead of an enemy and let it blow you back to open waters.

For those who are not familiar with ships, a good way to compare it is with driving a car. You are driving into your garage, the hood is just going through the door and suddenly your grand daughter jumps in front of the car. What do you do: full on the brakes, even use the hand brake as an extra, try to stop on time and at the same time try to keep the car from swerving into the garage walls. That’s about what is on a captains mind when he approaches a port or a dock.

The pilot left the ship again, to be called if things got better and I decided to wait; as a wind that suddenly pops up normally also suddenly disappears again. My guests did not notice that much of the whole happening although some felt the ship shuddering when I suddenly applied all the horse power available. But when I made my announcement to inform them of the situation, it was clear for even the greatest landlubber that “those seas out there were not normal” as a gentleman from Iowa put it to me later in the day. In the mean time we had company in the form of the Sea Princess who was scheduled for the anchorage but due to the wind and whipped up waves also had to wait for better times to come.

By 9 am. the wind died indeed down, and we moved towards the port. Picked up the pilot at the breakwater and backed into the harbor, docking on the inside of the pier. This made the Veendam the biggest and most expensive yacht in Monte Carlo harbor that day. Bit of a dreary day but everybody was happy that we at had a least made it.

Cruise ships call at Livorno because it is a convenient port for the ships tours to Florence, Sienna, Pisa, and other places in scenic Tuscany. The port itself is very busy with ferry and cargo ships going in and out twenty four hours a day. The entrance to the port is rather narrow and requires at 90o turn to get into and for somebody who has never seen it, it can be quite unsettling to see the big ships bow sweeping just past the breakwater. However the Veendam can turn on a dime so it is just a matter of lining her up correctly.

In this port two pilots come on board. While one is doing the navigation from on side of the bridge wing, the other is at the other side of the bridge, calling out distances. We were docking in the old section of the port and that requires a maneuver astern through a narrow opening. An opening which leaves less then a ships width clearance at either side. We position ourselves people as well to double check on the pilot’s decision and information. Although the pilots are very capable, when things go wrong it is still the Masters fault, so it is always advisable to have a second opinion from one of the navigators stationed aft, forward and in the side.

In order to make these maneuvers go smoothly and without hiccups, each member of the docking team has to know exactly what is going on, what to do when and to understand what the captain is doing with the ship during the evolution. To accomplish this, we have a meeting the day before and then we go through the whole maneuver. This is called Bridge Resource Management and the idea is that each member of the team hears what is going on and also has the chance to give input. The senior navigator explains the approach requirements, who to notify, when to call on the VHF, what the local requirements are for speed, the no go zones and any other issues. This is followed by the captain who explains his planned maneuver and where he needs people to be on standby and what information he needs from the bow and the stern in order to get the maneuver done as intended. This is followed by the chief officer, for where to position gangways, security issues, planned maintenance etc etc.

During this meeting everybody has a chance to bring issues forward and I have been in port preparations where I found out that the only officers who had ever been to a certain port where the 4th officer and the cadet. So their observations are very valuable as well, and are directly incorporated in the docking plan. Sometimes none of us have ever been to a port (see our call at Koper last week, which was a completely new call for Holland America Line) and then we all try to envision what problems might occur during docking and what the essential issues are that we have to keep an eye on.

The weather let us down a little bit today, here in Livorno, as it was mainly overcast with showers, thus not the most perfect weather for sightseeing but at least it was not cold. Maybe tomorrow it will be better in Monte Carlo.

It was an early arrival this time, mainly to beat the crowd. We were together today with the Saga Ruby, the Grand Mistral, the Pacific, the Marco Polo and the Silver Shadow and all had planned to be at the pilot station at 6 am. The Saga Ruby decided in the end to do the same ting as I did and went for an early arrival as well. The other four kept the same pilot time, so the pilots had to decide who was going first. Right in between there were several ferries going in and
two were only coming in, while the Veendam was already dispatching its tours.

Apart from a shower in the mid morning, it was a nice day, not too warm so good for sightseeing. The longest tour today had a duration of 11 hours and was not expected to be back on board until 8 pm. Normally there is a traffic delay as well for the buses trying to get out of Rome and as a result we did not sail until close to 9 pm. The motorway between Rome and Civitavecchia is very good it just takes a long time to get out of Rome itself.

With the ship being nearly empty of guests, I had the perfect opportunity to do some onboard inspections. That is what nowadays a lot of the captain’s work is all about. Inspecting and auditing. It is a fact of life that everything is getting more and more regulated from the outside but also from the inside. With Holland America expanding, more company procedures are streamlined and codified so that the product and the shipboard routines are the same from ship to ship. That means walking around and checking if it is all done according to the latest updates,

The company has all their rules and regulations streamlined in a Safety Management System and everything is posted in manuals and directives on an Intranet system. So when in doubt of something a search engine is available and things can be found. This aspect of the cruise business keeps changing very fast and thus we also have that intranet connection at home. During our leave period we check once or twice a week our company mail box to see what the latest updates are. In that way we do not have to catch up with an enormous backlog when we get back to the ship. Our people in the office are connected to the system by means of a black berry when not behind the desk. Some of them get so much correspondence that if they do not check their mail box very frequently it gets overloaded. That earned these Black berry’s the nickname Crack-berry’s, as you can get easily into the enslaving habit of checking the thing every five minutes all day and night long and starting to feel lost without it.

I remember with a bit nostalgia the year I joined the company and one day the captain got highly excited because he received a telex from the head office. Only one, but it was the most important event of the day. It had to be discussed at great length and the captain found that he had done a good days work after sending an answer back. Now the ship goes through around 400 emails a day, both external and internal and nobody thinks it is unusual.

Tomorrow we are in Livorno, or Leghorn as the British call it.