Today we spent the last of our day of the cruise at sea and it was a wobbly day. It has been horrible weather in the Gulf of Alaska and under Vancouver Island and the wave fields generated by this weather are rolling down the American coast as far down as Cabo San Lucas. The weather chart indicated that below San Diego the wave field would slightly curve away from the coast, making the waters through which we were to travel relatively smooth. However it did not work out that way, the wave field came and remained close to the coast and thus we had to bump our way through it. That means that I am in a sort catch 22. If I slow down then the ship has a smoother ride, but the pitching will still be there and slow us down below the average speed required, and if I keep the speed up it will result in a more uncomfortable ride but I will be on time in San Diego. Being on time in San Diego was the argument that won the day and I kept the speed up. If I come in too late guests might miss their flights and it will set back my departure time for the next cruise. So the ship pitched up and down against waves of 14 to 16 feet high with occasionally a higher or deeper one in between which would then cause the bow to slam into the waves and send a shiver through the ship. We kept that for the whole day although in the early evening it started to abate a little bit and thus final cocktail hours were not affected and suitcase packing could still be done in relative comfort. Continue reading

The weather forecast was calling for nearly wind still weather and smooth seas with a low swell from the West, which meant that there would be optimum tender conditions in the bay today. And that is what I needed as I was assigned to the 2^nd best anchorage location. There are three official locations and a fourth one if needed but that last one is so far away that a captain either stays on the engines, closer to town,  or decides to cancel altogether if assigned to that one. It is simply too far from the town necessitating a too long a tender distance. Even anchorage nbr. 3, is over a mile from the port but as it was assigned to the Sapphire Princess I did not have to worry about that. Nbr. one anchorage was taken up by the Carnival Splendor which does a two day call here, with an overnight stay at sea and thus gets the preference. We were on number 2 and by putting the anchor in the right position the Statendam was just inside the lee of the Cape itself protecting us from the open ocean. Continue reading

As the docking procedure in Puerto Vallarta takes such a short time, we normally arrive at the pilot station 1 hour before our official brochure time. Thus we were there waiting for the pilot at 07.00 hrs the good thing was, he was also waiting for us and that kept any delay to a minimum. At 07.01 he hopped on board and by 07.10 we entered the port, spun around in the harbor and came portside alongside berth nbr 2. Today portside docking was required as our 3^rd officer lifesaving wanted to test his tender platforms for tomorrow when we are in Cabo San Lucas. As that is a short stop, we need both forward platforms in operation to run with four ships tenders and 2 shore tenders, to make it as smooth a service as possible. How smooth that will be depends on the amount of swell running into the bay. You never can tell what that will be, as the swell can curve around the Cape and enter the bay, even when outside it is coming from a totally different direction. So we need both sides of the ship to be in operation to have a lee side available for in case there is a swell.  Hence the need to dock portside to check the platform out. Continue reading

After so much wind before, today came as a sort of anti climax. For most of the day we observed wind force 1. As a result the whole area was hazy from sunrise until sunset. We were sailing 12 miles from the shore, but we could not see anything. On a clear day, you can see from this distance the apartment buildings in Acapulco and Zihuatenego with the naked eye, but not today. This was nicely compensated by the fact that we now could see things in and on the water. What can normally be obscured by the rolling waves of the white crests and foam on the top of the waves, now had no place to hide. It made it possible that every guest who was willing to lean over the railing for half hour able to see turtles. Nice big (approx. 21.5 to 2 feet across) sea turtles. Happily paddling along with not a care in the world. The ship is no danger to them, as they float by and are pushed off by the pressure around the hull. We were sailing with about 18 knots of speed and thus anything that even came in the direction of the ship was bounced off by the water that was being displaced by the hull, courtesy of the bow pushing the sea apart. Continue reading

At 02.30 I was called by the bridge and informed that the wind velocity was slowly increasing. A sign that the Tehantepec “party” was about to start. The wind was hovering between 35 and 40 knots, right at the edge of the outflow boundary where we expected it to start. Then 45 minutes later it came down again to 30 knots and we all thought that the Tehantepec wind might be diminishing due to a change of wind direction in the Caribbean. Thus I returned to bed, only to be called again an hour later with the message that it had really started to blow. By the time I had came on the bridge it was blowing 50 knots and it just kept climbing. At 06.00 the anemo meter measured 59.5 knots of sustained wind (e.g. not just a wind gust); we kept that wind until 09.00 hrs when it slowly reduced again to zero by 10.00. It turned out that during the night, the axis of the Tehantepec wind had moved to the West and thus we had entered the centre of the outflow area later. As we were well prepared, there were no accidents, nor incidents or other negative outfalls from it. Housekeeping did not report any problems in the Starboard Balcony cabins either, so all the guests must have heeded my advice and kept their balcony doors closed. 55 knots blowing into your cabin can be a very interesting experience but you are better without it.
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The more you sail on a route, the easier it is to predict what you can expect in a certain area. At the same time you question yourself more if what you expect does not happen. Before we left Puerto Caldera the bridge team had discussed the weather that was to be expected during the next stretch of the cruise while sailing towards Huatalco. We were going to pass two areas with strong winds. The first one, while sailing past Lake Nicaragua, the 2^nd one, while sailing through the Gulfo de Tehantepec. In both areas’ the winds are caused by gaps in the mountain range that divides the Caribbean Sea from the Pacific Ocean influence area. If you know the average wind and direction in the Caribbean Basin, then you can quite accurately figure out what the wind will be on the Pacific side. Not within one or two knots but definitely in the 5 to 10 knots margin. That helps with the planning and we can in advance select the tanks that we can fill with sea water to keep the ship upright from being pushed over by the wind. Continue reading

We arrive here very early due to the tight schedule between Puerto Caldera and Huatalco and that means a pilot station ETA of 05.00. As the port itself starts working about an hour later, when it gets day light, we always have a challenge to contact Port Control to confirm our arrival time.  We already have the confirmation from the agent that all has been arranged but you have to make sure that pilot and port control also gets the confirmation from our side. This means that the officers on the bridge start calling on the VHF about an hour before arrival to see if anybody is awake. This time is was about 20 minutes before 05.00 when somebody suddenly woke up and in rapid Spanish started to create some excitement on the radio waves.  My Spanish is not that good but I could easily follow the gist of the conversation; being that this gentleman was rather shocked to suddenly to see the Statendam looming over the breakwater.   I had simply parked the Statendam on the pilot station and that had the desired result.  If that does not help, then there is always the option to start blowing the whistle. Continue reading

One thing I have not mentioned very much is one of the traditions we have in the Panama Canal. And that is serving Panama Rolls during the morning. We have them around the ship for the guests, we have them on the bridge and most important we have them on the mooring stations. For us that is important as it keeps the Panama Canal crew happy. When going through the locks we get 19 Panama Canal crew on board, 12 forward and 7 aft for handling the wires of the locomotives. We have more of them on the bow due to the fact that with the flare of the bow, the area that needs to be covered is larger and thus more men needed to handle the wires at the same time. On the stern, the aft mooring station is more compact as it is the blunt bit of the ship and thus 7crew suffice. Each group has a bo’sun who is in contact with the pilot on the bridge, on the same VHF channel as the locomotives. As soon as the locomotives have been connected they are on standby, waiting for them to be disconnected again. To keep them quiet and happy in the interim, we fill them up with Panama Rolls (http://recipes.wikia.com/wiki/Panama_Cinnamon_Rolls) and Orange juice. They get through a lot of that stuff as they tend to stack up for home as well. I have attached the recipe, although on the ship we do not always include cinnamon. Continue reading

It was extremely busy at the West Anchorage of Cristobal with a large number of ships waiting for a canal transit. On the East side were a number of containerships waiting to dock at Manzanillo port, just east of the Canal. They cannot anchor because it too deep there and that creates a problem. They drift all over place and of course also onto our course line.   As explained in my last Canal blog, they are not regulated by the Panama Canal as the East area is out of their jurisdiction. So we had to wriggle our way through the accumulated drifters to get to the breakwaters for a 05.00 arrival. We work that sort of thing into our voyage plan and thus we had extra time on our hands for that wriggling and that meant that the bridge sailed through the breakwaters at 05.00.14 and I could not make it more precise. Continue reading

After leaving Aruba we sailed west, keeping a large number of those waiting tankers on our portside. They were drifting with about 1.5 miles in the hour to the west due to the current that flows under Aruba. We had that current to our advantage for a few hours as well and a free push in the back is always appreciated.  We lost that current around 9 pm. and from then on we just had our ships speed with a following wind. We will keep that following wind until a few hours before we reach Cristobal as the weather chart is indicating that it will be wind still in the Panama area.

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