We are now in day 6 of our dry – dock and the count down has started. By late Tuesday afternoon or evening we should be leaving the dry dock and start a major clean up of the ship. Then we will have an evening and a night to finish off all the projects before we arrive in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday morning. We still have an “Ocean Liner Row” here in Freeport. The Explorer of the Seas sits in dry dock and the Fascination is next door in the water. This ship is going through a similar sort of SOE as all the HAL ships have been doing. There are two other cruise ships in port but they are laid up. To the right of us is the Island Adventure which sailed for a long time from Fort Lauderdale on gambling cruises. It was built as a Russian ferry/cruise ship long ago but its future now seems to be very bleak. To the left of us is the Casino Royale which is also a gambling ship that lastly sailed as the Jewel of St Petersburg off the Tampa Coast. So five cruise ships in the dry dock area and then there are the regular calls of other ships to the Freeport Cruise terminal. I see a mega liner about every other day docking there. The rest of the port traffic is mainly consists of MSC container ships that come in and leave like clockwork every day. Continue reading

Today was not a good day; at least not for me. Somebody from the dry – dock had decided in his infinite wisdom that the aft navigation light pole (that carries the stern lights, anchor light and Suez light) was in the way and thus had cut the whole thing down and then threw it away into the garbage skip. Without navigation lights you are not allowed to sail, so that pole is a vital piece of equipment for me. With the assistant bo’sun I managed to get the remains out, with the idea to have it repaired. As it did not look that good anymore, I spent the morning designing a new pole for the lights. At the same time I will have new light fixtures put on, so we will be ok again for the next 20 years. These sort of things happen but they make the dry – dock organization very unhappy as it means extra work for them. (……and they have to pay for it as well……) Continue reading

The welding of the new section went faster than expected and by 2 am. The cranes were released and returned to regular work. To the great relief of one of the contractors (who is doing the fitting out of the interior of the new section). His team had run out of “gas” as they called it. Not gas as for a car but acetylene, oxygen and Co2. Without those gases you cannot weld and burn and as it all takes place about 100 feet above sea level, you also cannot carry the heavy bottles onto the ship from dry – dock. Thus the cranes were badly needed again. Continue reading

The ship is now officially in day 3 and we have progressed from controlled chaos to full regular dry dock operations. Everybody is busy with his or her assigned work (mainly his as I have thus far counted only about 10 ladies onboard) and as this is day three, we are now in the period that everything has been pulled apart or ripped open or dismantled in order to repair, renew of completely reconstruct a certain area or item. To make this all possible, in a more or less coordinated way there are a number of systems and functions in place to make it all run smoothly. Continue reading

I returned from leave on the 4th. of January to take over command today at 0800 hrs. When I boarded the ship, guests were disembarking and preparations for dry dock were starting. This means that the ship is going from regular shipboard operation into a situation that can only be described “as controlled chaos”. Not that people were running around like chickens without a head but more like chickens that wanted to run in two directions at the same time. The faster the ship can make it to dry – dock after disembarkation is finished, the more time there is for the actual repair and refit work. Thus everybody was trying to do two (or more) things at the same time. As that can become even more confusing with two captains rummaging around; I collected all the relevant paperwork for this dry- dock and kept a low profile for the day. Continue reading

This is a photo of the front of the bridge of the Nieuw Amsterdam (III) from 1985. It is a HAL tradition that we have a message with best wishes somewhere painted on the ship. Where depends on the Captain, Chief Officer and the bo’sun. Sometimes on the bridge front, sometimes on the horseshoe above the Lido Deck aft and sometimes above the gangway entrance.

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After a very hectic leave I finally have some time to live up to my promise made in September to upload more ships history’s. As our latest ship, due for commission in the mid of 2010, will the Nieuw Amsterdam (IV) I thought it might be nice to start with the histories of the previous three Nieuw Amsterdams.

They can be found by scrolling down on the right hand side of my blog page under the Nieuw Amsterdam heading. Enjoy

Captain Albert

The weather remained glorious for the day and night and this is going to be a great call. We are here for the weekend and that helps for getting the tours going around Lisbon. Work traffic on the roads is a lot less than on a week day. Especially in the port areas there can be a nice traffic jam created when all the container traffic tries to get in and a 100 tour busses (from three ships) try to get out. On a Sunday at least the container traffic is not there. As Lisbon never sleeps it does not make much difference to the atmosphere. When we arrived yesterday near the dock at 7 Am there were still two big parties going on at restaurants overlooking the river. The pilot thought that they would stop at the “normal” time of around 9 am. They had also started at the “normal” Lisbon time of about 11 pm in the evening with a dinner and progressed from there. Continue reading

It is a long way in to Lisbon and thus arrival tends to be early. In order to be docked by 7am, you have to start approaching the port by going up the river by about 5.15am and that means that by 4am the initial preparations are being made already. It was very busy this time with ships; a whole procession was heading towards the sea buoy. The nice thing was that each ship had a slightly different arrival time and every ship could line up seamlessly behind each other without any danger or acrimonious exchanges over the VHF. Ahead of us was a small coaster, The Tina –C, and behind us was another one. This one was followed by the Seven Seas Voyager and behind her was the Costa Atlantica. For the rest there were several other ships coming in as well, but I do not recall their names. There were ships coming down the river as well and we passed one near the sea buoy and another one just before the pilot station. Continue reading

So with a good weather forecast on my mind, I went to bed while the ship sailed down the coast to our next port of call Leixoes. While I was dreaming about my upcoming vacation and seeing my wife again, I was woken up by the ships whistle just before 3 am. Followed up about 30 seconds later by a call on the telephone. A rather apologetic voice advised me that he could not see anything anymore. It had become as we say in the nautical business “a very small world”, fog had settled in along the Portuguese coast. Here waters of different temperatures come together and if there is no wind then the chance of fog is quite high. The weather forecast for open waters had indicated a wind force 2 to 3 and I had hoped for that. But it turned wind still and bingo, the haziness settled in. So my presence was required on the bridge to provide mental support to the bridge team. The way it works is that the Officer of the watch continues conning the ship, his assistant does the paperwork, telephone calls and all the other issues that occur during a watch and the captain provides the additional radar watch for locating and tracking targets. Continue reading