Captain Albert Schoonderbeek

It turned out to be a beautiful day in Naples. Almost no wind, sunny skies from arrival to departure and temperatures in the mid 70’s. Just the weather that a cruise should have. The Prinsendam arrived as scheduled at 7 am. at the pilot station and as the pilot was already waiting we could just continue directly to the berth. Sometimes the pilot likes to do some work but not today. Which meant that I just continued conning the ship into the harbour and after swinging around docked starboard side alongside the cruise terminal or Stazione Marittima as they call it here.

Certainly impressive if you arrive from the city side.

This terminal was constructed in 1936 with the official reason that there was such an upswing in traffic from the port that a new dedicated passenger terminal was needed. What however played in the background was that Mussolini had started to push for a merger of several Italian passenger liner companies’ in what eventually would become the Italia Line and later Finmare. In the thoughts of the Fascists, this also meant that the terminals from which the passenger liners would depart had to be big and impressive. This resulted in an indeed very impressive terminal here in Naples that can deal with up to 10 smaller passenger vessels. Nowadays as the ships are bigger there is normally room for a maximum of four.

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Captain Albert Schoonderbeek

The sea was as flat as a mirror when we approached the harbour entrance and it became a clear and dry day. Although the harbour basin is quite big, the authorities had decided that we should be parked at the East dock and that gave not that much room to swing the ship into the berth. But as the East dock is also the Eastern breakwater it was at least close to the entrance of the harbour and that saved timed. On advice of the pilot we docked stern in, as there was the expectation of wind in the afternoon and if you are then docked nose out it is all a bit easier. The East dock was just a short walk away from the boulevard and large enough to have buses and taxi’s come to the gangway. There was even a little sightseeing train that offered an hour tour of the city for 5 euro’s, so not bad at all.

Today one of my daily chores was a little bit more unusual. Welcoming new crew onboard the ship. Each new cruise, a number of the crew go on vacation and are replaced by new crew. However there is a difference between new crew and new, new crew.

With new, new crew we are talking about all of those who are either brand new to sailing or brand new to Holland America. As the ships culture is considerably different to shore side life, the company makes an extra effort to have these new members of the Club Prinsendam feel themselves at home as quickly as possible. They get a little welcome present and when they board there is a “buddy” waiting who takes the new one around and makes sure he/she knows how to get a good start in their new life. To make this welcome to a new world a bit more festive, we throw a welcome on board luncheon for all of them. Here they meet their, also new, fellow crew members and also the ships staff. This is normally done once a month when we have a sufficient number to make it a nice occasion.

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Captain Albert Schoonderbeek

During the night the wind got less and less and by the time we approached the pilot station it was calm. The swells were still running but as the port is inside a shallow bay, the swell is stopped by a long breakwater and inside it was as flat as a mirror. The weather forecast for the day was uncertain but in the end it was bright with sunshine all day. The approach to the harbour is very peculiar as the green buoys on the right hand side are located well inside the reefs and the reef buoys on the port side when going in, are over in the fairway. So if you would hug the green buoys when going in, what you normally do, then you would be aground almost at once. So when going in and when going out you have to favor the red side of the channel. That means that Port Control keeps an eagle eye on all the ships going through the channel as you do not want to create collisions with this peculiar setup.

Staying on the red side makes sense as the turn into the harbour basin is almost 90 degrees, so the wider the turn you can make, the easier it is. The piers are named after Spanish Royalty and so we had the Princessa Sophia pier and the Alfonso XIII to name but two. We were docking at the latter one and it is almost the closest berth to the town. Almost; as we had to leave some dock space for a local ferry that was arriving later in the day. The beginning of the pier is a container terminal but when there are more cruise ships scheduled for the day, they delay the cargo traffic to accommodate the cruise ships. We were however the only one and thus there was not much of an issue about where were going to dock and about taking a berth away from a cargo ship.

Apart from being a cruise and container port, Cadiz is also very important as a ferry port with daily departures to the Canary Islands. During the winter time it is mainly cargo traffic that is being ferried over but during the summer time the ferries are full every day with tourists. Especially Tenerife gets a lot of car traffic in the form of SUV’s and Campers from the Northern parts of Europe. At the moment the season has not started yet and so we only saw lorries with containers driving on (Roll-on) and driving off (Roll –off)

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