The great thing of this cruise is the number of sea days that form part of it. We have one or two ports and then we have a sea day again; and now in this case there are two sea days in a row. It makes the whole cruise so much more relaxed. Also a cruise is much more than just visiting port after port. Going to a lot of ports in a cruise is very interesting of course but then your cruise ship becomes a sort of overnight ferry-vehicle that transports you there. All programs and activities that HAL offers on board have to take a step into the background as it is port after port after port. Shipside has on those cruises the problem of getting our “fixed” items in, such as parties and meetings, especially the Mariners parties. For those you need a sea day and if there is only one in the cruise, that is the day it has to be. That day is then crammed with all the other activities, including the disembarkation speech and crew farewell. Most of the time that is the last day of the cruise and then the guests need to pack during that day as well. So there is much to say for having a few sea days in a cruise and on this one we have the luxury of having quite a few and everybody is enjoying them to the fullest. Continue reading

 Well ahead of the two other cruise ships we approached the pilot station at 0800 hrs. Although the pilots in Cartagena are good, I still have still not figured, after all my years of coming here, how it all works. We normally call Port Control, which has a control tower at the entrance of the Bay but they can never tell us what is going on. They take our ETA and then refer us to the pilot, who might or might not hear us depending if the VHF in the pilot boat is switched on. Then when you ask the pilot for a traffic update you get referred back to port control. They might then give you some information or they will refer you back to the pilot. If information is given it might not be correct as the pilots might decide among themselves to change the sequence of the ships sailing. Or a ship might not sail at all and somehow that information got lost somewhere. Cartagena is a very organized port, once you are in the sequence of the port process but it is always a challenge to find out what is going on. So we always focus on our two main concerns; what time will the pilot make it to the ship as we are not allowed to go in without one, and secondly is the channel clear. The latter is important as the Boca Chica access channel to the bay of Cartagena is not wide enough for ships to pass each other. As a matter of fact it gets smaller and more narrow every year. According to the pilot the harbor master keeps moving the buoys but does not advise anybody why. Continue reading

Well, the day started a lot earlier than expected as at 01.45 the Lady Navigator of the 12 to 4 watch hung on the phone with the exciting news that the Canal authorities wanted to change our (originally approved) ETA. Nothing new here, it happens all the time. So instead of being there at 04.15 we were now looking asked to be there at 04.00 at the latest. There is not much you can do about it. If you say no, you run the fair risk that you are then scheduled near the end of the convoy and that means that you are out late; and that means that you might be late for the next port. Not something I really wanted to contemplate so my answer was yes and gave orders to crank the ship up to a higher speed. By 3 am. I was on the bridge for the final approach and to do the drifting near the sea buoy while the ship was being cleared. Continue reading

The weather took a dramatic turn for the day, the aftermath of the hurricanes, now far to the north still caused the gathering of heavy rain clouds and it rained cats and dogs for most of the day; occasionally accompanied by a thunder clap. Well at least what comes down today will not come down tomorrow when we are in the canal. For the canal we are expecting overcast weather which might turn to sunny around noon time and only a chance of showers in the late afternoon. As we are expecting an early transit, I have been asked to be at the sea buoy by 04.15 in the morning that rain should not affect us too much. Still we just have to wait and see. I have seldom made a PC transit without having had at least one downpour during the day. The early transit will give the guests the option to see one set of locks at Dawn, one during sun rise and one in the late morning, so at least two of them during a period that it will not be too hot. Which is a good thing, as we had several instances in the past where people simply fainted due to heat and/or dehydration. Continue reading

Today we had the first of our two sea days. Late last evening we passed the Norwegian Pearl which was trundling along with a speed of 12 knots on her way to Vera Cruz (near Puerto Caldera) in Costa Rica.  You can do the stretch from Puerto Quetzal to there in one night if you make 23 knots but most ships do not go that fast, nor want to face the fuel cost and thus opt for a sea day in between. We have two sea days as we have to travel a distance of 889 miles to get to the Balboa seabuoy. Our course is taking us in one straight line down to the border of Costa Rica and Panama and we can do that because the land is veering away from us here.  Last night we kept a distance of approx. 5 miles to the coast, today we were more than 65 miles away and that remained so until late afternoon when the coast was coming closer again. In the meantime we passed the borders of Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.  Due to the strange twist in the continent here, some of these countries have large parts of the land connected to the ocean and some only a few miles. Continue reading

By 03.30 I was woken up by the Officer of the Watch advising me that it was time to poke my nose out of the bridge window again. With the wakeup call came the cheery news that Quetzal port control was advising that there was 20 feet of swell running into the port entrance. A remark like that gets you woken up very fast. The port entrance has a depth of 45 feet, so minus 20 leaves 25 and that is not even enough for the ship to get in, let alone the danger of such a swell. Although I was expecting more swell (there are two hurricanes blowing in the East Pacific, Jovan and Erwin) it should not have been that much. On top of that there was a tropical downpour with strong winds over the port, so my first thought was; this is going to be a day at sea. When I arrived on the bridge, I picked up the VHF and called Port Control myself. The voice of the captain normally results in more action that the scheduled called of the ships watch officer. After a lot of Spanish confusion the 20 feet was downgraded to 12. I was still not happy so I demanded to talk to the pilot. He came on line and advised it was only 4 feet. That I could believe as at that moment a cargo ship the Novograd was coming out. It was being banned to the anchorage to let the cruise ships in to use the dock.  While I was a happy man now, I think that the Novograd captain was less content. Continue reading

We did have indeed a nice bit of wind blowing while we crossed the Golfo de Tehantepec. Although the 40 knots predicted did not completely work out. For a while it breezed up to peak gusts of over 50 knots but as there was no swell and we kept the ship nicely upright with ballasting, the discomfort to the guests was at a minimum. What was correct in the forecast was that the predicted area was indeed very local. Basically a funnel wind coming down from the land and covering a maximum width of 60 miles. So it started to breeze up by 1930 hrs. and by 2300 hrs. it was calm again. Of course the wind gusts blew up the sea spray and within a short time we saw the salt settling on the decks, greatly displeasing the chief officer as it would be a lengthy task again the next morning to wash all off again. However Mother Nature was very obliging here and provided a torrential downpour just before sunrise which washed the whole ship down nicely. It is always nice to start the day with a freshly washed ship. Continue reading

 This time we did not have an early morning arrival as we were scheduled for a 10 am docking time and thus the ship approached the pilot station at 08.45. From far we saw the pilot boat already bobbing up and down on the waves as there was a considerable swell running from the South East. As Huatalco has a bay which is fully exposed from the south, an incoming swell is always a concern, but the SE angle of the swell was just good enough to make the dock area protected. The protruding cliff on the East side sheltered the port very nicely. In the past the port was not much frequented by larger ships and thus remained a well kept secret and hideaway. This is a natural bay but it was never wide enough for regular size cruise ships to anchor in, as the ships could not swing around on the tide, nor could they tie up with the stern (style mediteranee) and then lay behind two anchors, as the distance to the shore was too long; the end of the bay being very shallow. Cruise ships that visited had to anchor around the cliff to the East where the water is protected from the incoming swell by a reef and then tender into Hualtalco bay. That made the tenders exposed to the swell that is running most of the time, when entering the bay itself, and that could cause quite a bit of discomfort for the guests to say the least. Continue reading

 Only when sailing along its coast you realize how big a country Mexico really is. Since our departure from San Diego we have been constantly sailing along its coast and we will continue to do until the night of the 5th., when we will finally pass its southern border. We are staying an average distance from the coast of between 4 and 14 miles. The four to stay out of the 3 mile coastal zone which every country in the world sees as their property but sometimes we are much further out when the coast meanders away from the straight course line that we follow. We are also now starting to see ships again , as the coastal Mexican route is used by all shipping coming from and going to the Panama Canal or ports in that area. So we passed a few tankers and regular cargo ships who in some cases were going faster than we did. This is a novelty of the last few years. Continue reading

With nearly wind still weather we sailed into the Bahia de Banderas towards Puerto Vallarta.  About 30 years ago when the cruise ships started to frequent the port, you simply sailed in until you almost hit the land and then you tried to figure out where the entrance was. There were hardly any buildings or other construction that would indicate the existence of the town. So it was always a sort of puzzle to find the small harbor entrance.  Then through the years the building boom started and, what was handy for us, was the construction of two high rises right behind the low building of the flea market. Those high rises had red lights on the tops, to warn aircraft off and that made them ideal bacons for us to approach the port. Then port got more sophisticated with better entrance buoys and later on even a leading light and then we were really in business.  However the construction boom continued and now there are so many buildings that we cannot see the port entrance anymore. So we are basically back to square one, if it were not for the vastly improved radar equipment of the modern days.  With chart overlay and a very clear picture display we can now sail for the port on the radar until we are close enough to see the outline of the port entrance. Continue reading