Today was one of the highlights of our cruise. Mariner’s day. On regular cruises it is normally part of the activities of the last day of the cruise but on a Grand Voyage a complete day is used to focus on the milestone in days that each guest has achieved. As the Prinsendam has the highest repeater rate of the whole fleet and HAL has the highest repeater rate in the cruise business, almost everybody
onboard is a Mariner. Certainly after 70 days. So we spend some time and effort on these achievements. The company is forever trying to improve the service and the privileges that come with the number of days and recently we went to a new system of Stars (denoting the number of days up and until 200) and the old system of medals for those over the 200. The new setup can be compared to the frequent flyer system that is in use by the air lines. The more days that you make; the more perks that you get. Continue reading

It is 400 miles from Parintins back to Macapa Pilot Station and from there 160 miles to the Amazon Bar. Helped with 3 to 4 knots of current the Prinsendam raced down the river. It was my intention to arrive at Macapa sometime between 3 and 4 pm so I could have the ebbing tide with me while going back to sea. High water at Macapa was at 15.17 hrs and if I could make that, we would sail with the ebbing current towards the North Atlantic Ocean while still having a good water level at the bar. It worked out quite well. The pilots wanted to get off the ship as soon as they could. I could not figure out whether it was because there was another ship waiting for them or that they wanted to go home but they kept urging for more speed. However I found 17 knots plus 5 knots of current, totaling 22 knots more than enough. Maybe one of the pilots had to get home quickly to celebrate the championship of his soccer team. He is the chairman of the Football Club of Belem and while we were at anchor in Parintins, he spent all afternoon on the bridge wing watching TV on his laptop to see if his club would win. They did, so he was a very happy camper but being stuck on the river, had little chance to join in the celebrations. Continue reading

We all thought that having left Manaus behind us would mean that all our troubles would be over and we would be able to adhere again closely to the planning of our cruise. Well, no. The Amazon had another surprise for us in store. It had to do with the strong current of the Amazon but also to do with the work load of the pilots. For some reason there is currently a lot of traffic on the river, so many ships are going up and down that the pilot associations have a hard time servicing all these vessels. Therefore the two pilots assigned to the Prinsendam for the second part of the river where coming up with a tanker and would transfer at the pilot station. However that ship could not maintain it’s speed as planned and the ETA to the pilot station was getting later and later. In the end the ship was two hours behind the original schedule. That original schedule that I had to adhere to, to be on time in Parintins. So we were going to be late. Two hours late. Continue reading

We were docked last night by 21.45 and by 22.15 I was in bed as it had been a long day. First standby during the night while going up the river from midnight onwards, relieved for 2 hours by the chief officer, then the drifting off the dock, then the anchoring and later on the waiting for the approval to dock. As I was informed by the agent about every hour that things would be settled “soon” I had to remain on standby. With the situation at hand, there was no way of telling what they might have come up with next, so I remained standby for…….. whatever………. could or would develop next. Luckily it ended with us docking and spending a quiet night alongside the dock. Thus I had the plan to sleep in. At least until 8 am in the morning. That would mean 9 hours un-interrupted rest. It did not work, by 06.30 I was awake as I could be, all due to the body being tuned in to the watch system by now. So time to get up and get ready for the next challenge. Continue reading

We approached nice and timely the port of Manaus. At 08.30 we came past the “parting of the waters” as they call it, where the waters of the Amazon River meets the waters of the Rio Negra. Normally the two waters, muddy brown and ink black, remain separate for a long time due to the difference in the compounds in the water. This time the borderline was much more blurred as the current from the Amazon was so much stronger that it pushed right through the outflow of the Rio Negra. We followed the Royal Princess who, as scheduled by the port, would dock ahead of us at the Torres floating dock. To the amazement of all of us on the bridge she suddenly stopped still in the water about a 1000 feet from the dock. Before we could inquire the pilot received a phone call with the order for us to do the same. So I stopped the Prinsendam a 1000 feet away from the Royal Princess and drifted. It turned out that at 10 pm last night the Harbour master had issued a port order that no ships were allowed to dock at the city docks. All involved only found out about that this morning when the pilots and the agent offices opened and the order was found sitting in the fax machine. Continue reading

I had decided to arrive early at the anchorage, two hours before the official arrival time as past experience had shown that Boca is always a challenge for the tender operation. Especially when having to make the tender pier acceptable to our standards. When the Amazon is low, the locals have a floating pontoon with a catwalk that they move along with the receding river. When the river gets higher that pontoon disappears and the ships are left to fend for themselves. Thus I arrived at 6 am sunrise time, and lowered a tender with the chief officer in charge. His mission was to see if we could reach the village by sailing over the now inundated shore line and find a place where our tenders could somehow safely dock. This tender was loaded with wood, carpet, upholsterers and Carpenters. With a sailor on the bow to do soundings, a look out, a tender driver and the chief officer in command, expedition “Baby-Prinsendam” proceeded slowly towards the church square of Boca de Valeria. Continue reading

The current did not get any better (that is less) during the night. Instead it only became stronger. The minimum observed was 2.8 knots and the maximum, for a short time, 5.1 knots. That meant that by doing 20 knots through the water, the ship made on average only 16.5 knots of speed over the ground. And I did have the ship going full out. The Amazon is a very wide river and thus it can be safely done to run sea speeds. However it is not as wide as the open sea and therefore the chief officer and I are on the bridge in turns to monitor the activities of the pilots and the officers. The chief being on the bridge during 1800 – midnight period and me from midnight to 0600. Not directly involved in the navigation but keeping an overview to ascertain that if a mistake would occur it would not create an error chain with dangerous results. So until 6 am I was watching the speed log with great interest but the current never ever did relent to something acceptable, acceptable in order to arrive on time. By 6 am. it was quite clear that we were going to be late, quite late. The Amazon was showing it strength and there was nothing that I could do about it. Continue reading

With the pedal to the metal we raced from the mouth of the Rio Para to the mouth of the Amazon, trying to make the up the lost time from Belem. I had squeezed the courses as close to the coast as possible, running the course line over the 20 meter depth line (60 feet) and tried that way to find a balance between the shortest run and the least shaking because of the squat. We did not shake, thus at least that worked. By 06.00 we were at the depth line where the water became less than 10 meters or 30 feet; at least according to the chart. Normally you then have a few feet more as the depth-numbers in the chart refer to minimum depths that seldom occur. The problem was that the tide was running against us and we would have to battle it instead of getting an extra free push in the back. When sailing in depths of less than 10 meters you will really notice squat when at full speed, so I came down to 15 knots to see how that worked. If the vibrating would start I only had to reduce more. No shaking occurred however and I could continue with that speed for the next three hours over the bar area. Continue reading

I had gone to bed early as I knew it would be a long standby from the Belem pilot to the anchorage 6 hours up the river. I had confirmed my pilot time in the afternoon and so I thought that all was well in the world. Barely two hours in bed and I got a call from the pilot station confirming that they would be there on time. Nice to know but it had already been confirmed by the agent earlier in the day. Luckily the lady calling had a nice husky voice, so it was at least pleasant to listen to. She then proceeded to give me the coordinates of where the pilot would board. I think that she had been selected for her knowledge of English, as her nautical knowledge was way below par, she could not even properly read out the position in degrees, minutes and seconds. So it took awhile before I had the numbers on paper. I had the navigator plot the coordinates in the chart only to find out that the position given was somewhere inland, where I absolutely could not go thus I decided to continue to the original position indicated in the chart; I was now wide wake and I decided to stay on the bridge but lost two hours of valuable sleep. It was a clear night and thus I could help out looking for the pilot boat incase they had indeed decided to park themselves somewhere else, wherever that might have been. However the boat was in the normal position as expected and at just after 3 am. we had the pilot onboard. Continue reading

We were blessed with yet another beautiful day at sea. It was a bit breezy with moderate to fresh winds blowing from the North East but as that was more or less a following wind, it did not feel very windy on the decks. For most of the day we sailed in deep water away from the continental shelf but in the course of the evening we came closer to land and the depth of the water rapidly decreased until about a 100 feet under the keel. I had set my courses in the chart in such away that we sailed along the coast with this depth under the keel, as it kept us just outside the fishing grounds. The local fishermen set out long nets that are indicated with a buoy at one end and their boat at the other end. During the night they have strobe lights (very fast flashing light) on that buoy but as they forever seem to run out of batteries the buoys are hardly visible during the night time. They then have the tendency to either race in the direction of the buoy and that looks as if they are on a collision course, or start shining with a searchlight into the dark wheelhouse and blinding all of us. Neither of the two options is very pleasant and by staying a few miles further out, you can avoid it all. Continue reading