With the delay of going through the Strait of Messina, my arrival on time in Naples for 8 am at the pilot station was going to be nearly impossible. I had to hope for following winds, the stronger the better, while going that way and then hope for very little wind while docking in Naples. Wishful thinking to say the least. The Messina pilot advised that the port of Naples was shut due to strong winds so things did not look good. At least he was working in the shelter of the Italian mainland and of Sicily and did not have to deal with a stronger wind than wind force 5 for getting off and on the ships. Messina pilots are the only pilots that I know of that want ships to speed up instead of slow down for the pilot transfer. In every port of the world you have to slow down to a speed of anywhere between 4 and 10 knots and make a lee. Except in Messina; here they want you to go as fast as possible and keep your course. So I have taken over the pilots here while at full maneuvering speed, e.g. 16 to 17 knots. In principle it is not a bad idea, as the faster you go the easier it is for the pilot boat operator to bring and keep his boat alongside for the transfer. This time it was not different. We brought the ship back up to 16 knots and the pilot hopped onboard. Continue reading

By midnight we were rounding the South point of the Peloponnesus, sailing through the strait and keeping Nissos Kythera to the South of us. It was fairly quiet for a change. We saw numerous ships at anchor in the lee of the land. Small ships probably waiting for the weather to get better before they continued their voyage. It continued to blow quite hard but the wind had not had much time yet to build up the waves. As the Mediterranean is basically an inland sea there is no ocean swell or tide and that means that any waves that you encounter are generated by the wind. As soon as the wind stops the waves disappear as well. Thus until we cleared the Nissos Kythera the ship was fairly steady and most guests made it to bed before the wobbling started. Continue reading

Today I returned to the Prinsendam while the ship was docked in Piraeus, the port of Athens in Greece. I ended my last blog with the remark that the challenge for the coming leave was to move my mother to a retirement home and that was accomplished without too much of an upheaval. As the Old lady (she is 95 years old) said: I will now be in the right place for when I am getting older. The nice thing was that her new room has the same layout as her previous apartment, just a bit smaller. So the paintings, furniture and her two favourite chairs (one for knitting and one for reading) could go back in the same location and the bed lined up in the same way in the bedroom. All and went well and thus reasons to be grateful for. The Prinsendam docked early, to facilitate guests to make it on time to their flights as this was the end of the cruise. I was brought to the ship by the agent at 0800 as I had come in the night before from England. This will be a shorter contract than normal, being just over two months as my colleague and I work our dates around the shorter and longer cruises. With the Prinsendam, longer cruises are interspersed with shorter ones and the normal three month cycle does not work unless we would relieve each other in the middle of the cruise. That is never ideal and thus our contract lengths vary accordingly. Continue reading

This time the ship is going to stay only two days in Tilbury instead of three. We are still working on the Greenwich schedule, which requires arrivals and departures at high water. That normally takes a three-day call to make it work but this time, with the spring tides, it just worked out that the high water cycle coincided with our guest change overtimes. As can be found in the archives, we do not call at Greenwich anymore as it turned out to be logistically not possible to do a good change over there, due to lack of a proper cruise terminal and dock. For a regular port call it is a great spot, if the tide is right of course. So Seattle management agreed with my proposal to deviate to Tilbury and we have been going there for the whole season, much to everybody’s satisfaction. However with only a two-day call, we were going to have the change over of guests on the first day and the second day will be the regular port call at London for the new guests. That meant that I had to dock as early as possible to start unloading luggage at 0200 in the morning so that the early disembarks could leave at 0400 and arrive at Heathrow at 0600 hrs. Continue reading

As explained before we call at Rosyth for Edinburgh. You can also use Leith for that purpose or South Queens Ferry. Leith is tide and wind depended as you have to go through a lock and South Queens Ferry is an anchoring area so my vote goes to Rosyth at all times. Leith is great if you can make it inside the lock but that is very weather dependent. Thus Rosyth it is and there we went. Pilot at 0600 and sailing up through the estuary of the river Forth, called the Firth of Forth towards the dock. We were going against the end of the ebb tide and we noticed about a two-knot current running, easing off all the time, and not much taking into account what we would have on departure. Before we come to the berth we have to pass under the Forth Railway Bridge and the Forth Motorway Bridge and those bridges can be an obstacle when the tide is too high. The top of our radar mast reaches a maximum of 46.5 meters above water and that worries pilots if the tide is higher than expected or taking longer to fall than expected. During our last call, the pilot had those concerns, as he was not certain if his calculation was in synch with reality. To avoid a similar situation again I had the mast lowered in the morning, reducing our height to 39.5 meters and that made everybody happy. It is one of the reasons that the Prinsendam can go to Rosyth while the other HAL ships have to drop the hook at South Queen Ferry. The Prinsendam is simply designed for this sort of stuff. Continue reading

The Scottish ports are known to be very hospitable and Invergordon was no exception. I knew that everything would be arranged properly, even on this short notice and it was. The pilot hopped onboard at the scheduled time of 06.00 hrs. and we sailed into the fjord or estuary that gives access to the port of Invergordon. The port is quite often used as a shelter for bad weather and at one time it was the Royal British Navy favourite hi-da-way to do so when things were getting a bit too wild in Northern part of the North Sea. Now the same is done by cruise ships that are blown out of other ports. The town is also frequented by ships on normal cruise calls. Thus yesterday, the Ocean Countess was in port. When she left, she needed two heavy tugboats just to get off the dock and she is only a small ship. According to the pilot, “the wee………… bit of wind had breezed up to quite a bit of wind” and Invergordon had thus not been exempt from the strong winds completely. They had had 40 knots blowing at the pilot station for a considerable time yesterday. By the time we got to the dock, things were a lot better, but the nearly wind still weather of 8 knots that had been forecast was not in residence yet. It still blew about 20 knots from the South East. That SE wind that had been my enemy for the last few days, was now my friend as it blew the ship into the direction of the dock. By using bow and stern thruster I could easily regulate that drift and by 0800 we were safely docked. Five minutes later the gangway was out and the guests started to stream ashore. Continue reading

It is not that far to Portree; you just have to sail all the way around the West and North side of the Isle of Skye and then descend down again keeping the island on the portside. I had scheduled the ship to arrive very early in the morning, to have sufficient time available to make up my mind whether it was at all possible to call without delaying the start of the tender service if the decision was positive. The problem with Portree is, it offers a sheltered anchorage from any direction except the south east and east. At least, if you have to anchor in the outer part of the bay. If you can anchor all the way inside it is a safe haven for all wind directions at nearly all times. In the outer part it is not. So I had to know how much wind there was exactly blowing, as the mountain ranges to the East should in principle block most of it. Still there was going to be a free wind surface area of about 3 miles. Quite enough of a distance for Wind force 9 to be able to make things interesting. The holding ground in the bay is not that great and if the anchor would drag, the ship would be aground in no time, as the wind would not push it to open waters but towards the rocks inland. Thus we observed the situation and although the mountains shielded the bay from some of the worst of the wind, it was still blowing 25 knots with wind gusts expected of up to 30 knots or even more. Then Portree is not a safe place to be. By 07.30 I had made up my mind and we had to abort the call. Continue reading

I was not a very happy captain when I reviewed the weather for Oban. The wind, which was blowing force 5 to 7 in Peel, was only predicted to intensify and that might have grave consequences for the call at this port as it was an anchorage call. Also by coming to the Scottish Isles it left me we very little “plan B’s” as an alternative as there is not much there that works here with the prevailing winds. My only hope was that I could anchor close enough under the lee of the land to ensure a safe tender service. At Oban we were assigned the outer anchorage, about a 10-minute tender distance away from the dock. There is an inner anchorage but the Prinsendam is really too big for the area as the ship would not be able to swing freely around the anchor on the turning tide. Going in and drifting on the engines would be an option but then the ship would effectively block the harbour from the ferries coming and leaving. Oban is the main hub for the local ferries to the outlying islands and the ferries come and go about every two hours. Sitting with the ship right in the way, would certainly have raised the Harbourmaster’s blood pressure and that is something one has to avoid at all times. So off we went and hoped for the best. Continue reading

Dear All,

just a quick note to all readers, as you can see I have not been posting for the 6th of september the Oban which call we made on the 7th. However I write the blog the morning after and on the 7th. I had to cancel Portree due to inclement weather. We continued to have bad weather while sailing around the North of Scotland.

I will come back to you as soon as the cruise returns to normal (weather) to finish the last days of this cruise ,blogs and my time on board.

My apologies

Captain Albert

We made or next “zag” across the Irish Sea and arrived at 0700 at the anchorage of Peel. It was very windy but as the wind was from the South West, it could not whip up any waves and thus we could make our call. As the wind was very blustery and sometimes gusted up to wind force 8, I spent most of my day on the bridge. When the yawning of the anchor became too much we had to reposition again and lower the other anchor to reduce the ships movement. This works most of the time very well as the 2nd anchor puts “the brake” on the movement of the ship before momentum can be gathered. Normally the ship lies behind its anchor and when there is a lot of wind, the ship starts moving behind the anchor as a sort of pendulum. We call that yawning. The 2nd anchor acts like your finger would when you would stop a clock’s pendulum from swinging. The danger is if there is a very strong wind gust and the main anchor starts dragging, that it gets fouled up with the 2nd anchor. Then you are in deep trouble as you cannot easily un-twist two heavy anchor chains entwined with two 6 tons anchors hanging on it. Thus it is something that has to be done carefully and then be closely watched. That meant: captain on the bridge from the time that we approached the anchorage until the safe return to open waters. Continue reading