Naples today was the last port of call of our cruise. Tomorrow we are in Civitavecchia where the majority of our guests will go home. Some have been onboard since Fort Lauderdale (April 30th) and some were onboard for only this one cruise. 22 guests that also boarded on April 30th. will stay with us until Amsterdam (June 19th) and some even beyond. Then there is a group onboard of 125 who embarked on 20 May and who will also stay with us until Amsterdam. This is one of the beautiful things of the Prinsendam, as no cruise is the same, you can just keep stringing the cruises together and eventually you will have made it from Antarctic all the way to the Arctic. Not a bad way to see the world from the comfort of the Elegant Explorer. Continue reading

Sailing through Steno Elafonisou turned out to be a pleasant surprise. There were a lot of ships but most of them were going with us in the same direction and we were able to overtake them as we were going full out to make up for our delayed departure from Piraeus. The only moment of excitement came when a car carrier next to us confused changing course to starboard with changing course to port and suddenly started to come in our direction. However before I could pick up the VHF and ask him what he thought he was doing, the error was obviously detected and we saw a rather fast course change to starboard. From then on all was well in the world. Opposite traffic mainly consisted of three cruise ships, the Crown Princess, the Ruby Princes, the Noordam and one small coaster. Continue reading

I have never been to Piraeus without something happening, something happening that made our schedule not work out as planned. This time it was no different. It seems that with whatever they organize, the Greeks need to create it from chaos (which is a Greek word to start with) first and then take it from there. I have now been coming with the ships to Piraeus since 1987 and every time something occurred that livened up the day. The good news was that it was a beautiful day; hardly any wind, temperatures in the mid seventies and we were docking at the pier location 3 West which is the official passenger terminal. That is the easiest one to get outside the dock area from. If you are at one of the other docks then there is bus shuttle to take you to and from the ship. That works well, but it takes time. Continue reading

Sometimes the best is saved for last and this was certainly the case this time. With the cruise slowly coming to an end, the transits of today were a big highlight of the cruise. We had sun shine all day and the thus all the sights were clearly visible, as the cruise schedule had been planned in such a way that both transits would be made during day light. For somebody who would follow the ship from a distance it would look rather strange. On departure from Sevastopol we went full ahead crossing the Black Sea. Then for the transit of the Bosporus we went slow with an average speed of 14 knots and then we cranked the Prinsendam up again to full ahead for the crossing of the Sea of Marmara; and then we went down again to 14 knots for the Dardanelles. Once clear of the strait we continued with a speed with 18 knots for an early arrival in Piraeus. To a cargo ship captain this would never make sense. Continue reading

The exit of the harbour of Sevastopol is facing west and thus you sail east while going in. With the sun rising in the East it means that you have the sun in the face and that makes it difficult for scenic viewing. We had to wait until we were past the first land on the starboard side before we could view the surroundings by looking aft instead of forward. The pilot boarded right on time and we then continued at slow speed towards the entrance. There is a speed limit of 6 knots all the way in, so it takes time to get to the dock, whether we like it or not. But as it was a beautiful morning, we did not mind and binoculars were applied frequently by the deck officers while I kept conning the ship to the dock. The pilot came on board with a VHF and two cell phones and was fully occupied with receiving calls and talking to other people. I did not know that it was so complicated to get into the port, that the whole world had to be called, but he kept at it. In between he smoked bad quality cigarettes on the bridge wing. Continue reading

Sinop is a small resort like town, with a promenade and little café’s tucked away behind a small peninsula. This Peninsula is basically a hill sticking out of the water and it provides shelter from Northerly winds. Those blow quite often in the summer hence the reason why the town is built on the south side and not on the north side of the hill although there is a nice bay as well. They must have built a two finger pier there in the recent past as it looked fairly new; with the North finger being reserved for larger ships, mainly ferries and the longer South finger for use by fishermen and other small craft. That pier also acts as a breakwater so at the inside a sort of Marina was created. Apart from a Harbor masters office there is no port infrastructure what so ever, so we just did our thing and kept approaching until somebody started squawking on the VHF. Continue reading

This was an interesting experience. I had been advised that the pier was 300 meters long and I knew that I had to be careful because of cranes on the dock. Cranes that could not moved away and were extending over the edge of the dock as well. So with an extra officer near the lifeboats (as they stick out from the side of the ship, I thought that everything had been taken care of. Wrong. When the pilot came onboard, he happily told me that there were ferries at the North end of the dock and that there was a coal ship at the south end of the dock. But, the good news was also that there was 240 meters reserved for us so we fitted in. The Prinsendam is 204 meters long and yes that is sufficiently space but it was calculated without taking into account that the width of the coal ship would take another 20 meters away from the 240 during the swing. The 240 meters was only there, when the stern would be past the coal ship. Oi, and also he forgot to mention that the ferry ahead of us had its lines running from the bow over the water to the dock, taking another 10 meters away. Continue reading

After our midnight exit from the Bosporus we entered the Black Sea on an easterly course. We hugged the Turkish coast for the whole day as our next port of call Trabzon is located in Turkey in the South East corner of the black sea. Thus we followed the coast in a more or less straight line and depending on the contours of the coast it was sometimes closer and some times further away. It also gave us the chance to find out if the Black Sea was really black. Well it is not, it is more brownish. However the people who named it found the waters black so they called it the Black Sea. The Romans spoke about the friendly sea because of its fertile waters. Continue reading

In most cities things quiet down during the night, but Istanbul, together with New York and Hong Kong never seems to slow down. I was expected that the traffic on the river would come to a standstill during the night, apart from the thru traffic in the Bosporus but not at all. Maybe the total count of the local ferries went down but the river looked as busy at 11 pm in the evening as it had been at 3 pm. yesterday when we arrived. The big-a-boate- mentioned yesterday arrived indeed and thus there were three cruise ships in port today. Ranging from the very big Costa liner with 2500 via the Prinsendam of 800 to the very small Minerva with less than 300 guests on board. Continue reading

The Dardanelles are of course in Turkey but to get there you have to sail through the Greek islands. Some of those islands are much closer to Turkey than they are to Greece. On the west of an island it might be 10 miles away from the nearest other Greek island but less then a mile away from the Turkish mainland coast. As there is sometimes a bit of friction between Greece and Turkey, just think about the Cyprus issue, it is amazing to see how much the two countries are intertwined as far as their border is concerned and how well it all works. At least for us. Thus we made our way towards the Dardanelles by sailing around several Greek islands to get here. Continue reading