The ship docked with a full house of eager guests ready to go ashore as they had not been able to do so in Bar Harbor due to the wind. It was a regular cool but nice day for Halifax and all of us onboard were very happy as a rainy day would have not been nice for the guests after missing a port. Still there were complaints galore about the weather, as there is always a group onboard who seem to think that if you go on a cruise you get sunny and warm weather, where ever you go with the ship. Even when going to the Antarctic or the Arctic there is always somebody who has not brought any warm clothing, because ……….. they were going on a cruise. So for some today did not give the cruise weather they had expected while for others used to colder weather at home it was just a pleasant day. These are sort of battles you cannot win and the only thing you can do is try to get the message across that the weather today was very good for Halifax, especially taking into consideration the lateness in the season.

Today the Bridge had something interesting on their hands, a corporate trainer/supervisor/auditor, called a Fleet Captain. Each company has one of these persons; they are regular captains from the fleet but they have been farmed out to Carnival Corporation for a Bridge Resource Implementation program. The idea is to ensure that all the ships of all the companies which are controlled by Carnival Corp. have the same bridge watch standards.  These fleet captains go around, training the crew in bridge procedures which are the standard for the whole fleet. These standards will eventually also result in having similar bridges on all the ships. So the bridge of a future HAL ship will be identical to one of a Cunard or Princess ship. Not a bad idea as it will make the familiarization with the equipment, when coming onboard a new ship, much easier.

But that is still for the future. At the moment we are still in the process of getting the routines standardized. The basic principle is that the whole bridge team is aware of what each member is doing. That means there have to be routines for sharing information, for starting and ending the watch and for calling attention if there is something the matter.  To makes things fail proof the functions in the team have to be clearly assigned.

So we have an Operations Director (OD), which is somebody with a Master License. On arrival and departure this is quite often the captain but if the captain is maneuvering it is somebody else. The OD keeps oversight and insures that nothing is missed by anybody.

Then there is the Navigator who is in charge of the watch when at sea. His/her minimum qualification is having a Chief Officers license. He/she is assisted by a Co Navigator who can have any license. This person takes care of the position, administration, telephone calls etc.

To give an example: The ship departs and the Captain is Maneuvering. The Staff Captain will then be the Operation Director; keeping an eye on the Pilot, the navigator, the helms man, the look out and the Captain. The co – navigator might be forward doing the mooring lines. When the ship is away from the dock, the Pilot will normally sail the ship to open waters. He will have the Conn., but he is not in charge. that remains with the Captain. The Captain can now fill the gap of the co- navigator, until he/she arrives, as long as the Staff Captain stays as Operations Director. Or the Captain and Staff Captain can switch.

But if possible we keep the man with the oversight the same. When the pilot leaves, he can then transfer the “conn” directly to the Navigator, without having to go through the extra step of Pilot – to Captain – to Navigator.

When the officer comes back from the mooring station, the captain will brief him/her and then he/she can take over the position of the co –navigator.

There are a lot more variations possible but the idea is that once the show gets on the road, there are as few functions changes as possible taking place. The less there are, the less chance that there is a loss of situational awareness and somebody is missing a vital piece of information.

How it goes, depends on the Captain. If it is an easy port / day, the captain might let the team run the whole show and only plays a minor roll but of course will still be in charge. The more difficult the situation, the more prominent the role of the captain will be. It is a great tool to get the juniors more and more involved.

To ensure that this is done to company standard, we have Fleet Captains going around the ships. That can be one of our own colleagues but it can also be a Costa, P & O or Cunard Captain, as all the ships have to have the same standards and you can really benefit from a pair of fresh eyes, “looking in from the outside”.

I had all my students in the lifeboats today, going through all the inventory of the boats as they are all coming close to their exams. Biggest focus point is always: “are the lifeboat rations edible and do they taste nice”, yes they are edible: they taste like Scottish Shortbread and are even more nutricious.

Tomorrow we are in Sydney and then I will hold a presentation for all the crew onboard about the new 3- alarm system we are introducing. To my utter amazement the crew is quite excited about the meeting. It is almost as if it is a school class outing.  All together to the Show lounge…………..

It is supposed to be sunny tomorrow in Sydney and that will be a good bonus as it tends to rain there are lot.

With nice sunny weather and a fresh breeze we sailed into Bar Harbor. As expected the “Apartment of the Seas” was already in and being the bigger ship had been allocated the South anchorage. A bit smaller and closer to the lobster pots but also more sheltered and closer to the port. The weather forecast indicated that the wind was to abate during the day. But when the anchor had been dropped and the tender service commenced, it went the other way. The wind picked up to wind force 6 gusting 7 and that made a safe tender operation not so safe anymore.  As mentioned in my previous Bar Harbor blog, the north anchorage is wider, more room to swing but because there is more room it is also less sheltered and the wind has more free water surface to whip up the waves, and it did so. The captain suspended tender service, hoping for better weather e.g. less wind, but it was not to be.  Then the only decision was made, that could be made and that was canceling   and sail away.  Apart from disappointed Guests there was also instant panic in the kitchen as the Exe. Chef had ordered Fresh Lobster. Luckily the lobsters were delivered and brought on board by a few brave sailors who stood on the tender platform with the waves crashing around their feet.

Going to another port was really not possible within in the available time frame here and thus the only solution was to spend the day at sea and arrive at the scheduled time in Halifax tomorrow morning.

With such an abrupt end to the Bar Harbor call this would be a short blog if I had not something exciting to announce. After a long waiting period the name of the new Pinnacle Class ship has been finally announced. The ship will be called Koningsdam which translates into English as Kings Dam. We have never had a ship with that name in our history and there also is no town in the Netherlands with that name. No doubt there will be a small dam in Holland somewhere with the name Koningsdam but that is normal. Give me a name and I will find you in Holland a piece of Dam or Dyke that combines it.

So now we have the name Koningsdam. I had hoped for Leerdam (III) and that was my entry in the name contest which the company ran a few months ago. But I suppose that I am too traditional and they wanted something new.  The name was chosen to reflect that the Netherlands has since 100 years a King – Koning – again and at the same time to illustrate that this ship, the biggest ever built for the company will bring out a fresh approach and new look to Holland America Cruising.

The keel section being lowered into the dock

The ship is already under construction as on August 20, the first section of steel, the keel plate, was lowered into the Dock at Marghera which is the Fincantieri shipyard close to Venice.  Delivery date is in February 2016 and it is not yet known where the ship will sail first.  The ship is an evolution again from the Vista and Signature class and will incorporate the latest “needs” in the industry. Do not expect an ice-skating rink or a rock climbing wall, but the number of specialty restaurants will be boosted up to five. On the Nieuw Amsterdam, there are currently three; Pinnacle (Pacific Northwest cuisine), the Canaletto (Italian) and the Tamarind (Asian fusion). Now there will be two more. What they will serve is still a well-guarded secret.

Talking about food, the company recently redesigned our Hamburger Bar onboard (Terrace Grill) and renamed it the Dive In. Hamburgers and Hot dogs are now cooked fresh, a sort of designer approach, which means that you have to wait for them. Guests receive a pager so they do not have to hang around while waiting. I must say, it is VERY VERY good and the sauce that goes with the various options that you have is even better. My only problem is that it the large portions are very large and if I am going to have a hamburger for lunch I need to reduce dinner in the evening to a very small snack. But for the Burger-Aficionado, this could be Walhalla.

Tomorrow we are in Halifax. Again we are not alone. This time the Norwegian Gem is in port with us, and due to the Gangway layout, we have to dock nose in, otherwise both ships do not fit in properly.

The weather forecast is going to be partly cloudy with a chilly breeze from the North. It looks like autumn is approaching.

Boston offers quite a scenic ride in but as a guest you only see it once; on the way out. Early morning arrival means that it is barely twilight and then it is difficult to make anything out.

To the top right you can still see in Boston the frames used to help loading and unloading the cargo ships

The Pier that we are docking at is the Black Falcon Terminal which used to be one of the larger cargo piers in the port. Holland America used to dock there already in the days of the old freighters.  You can still see the steel poles on top of the building that were used to hook up steel wires with blocks so the cargo could lifted out of the hold onto the pier and vice versa in a faster way than using the ships derricks.  Since the cruise ship boom the Pier has been spruced up to make it passenger friendly but it could do with a major overhaul to get it up to modern times, especially as in the high season there can be three cruise ships in at the same time.

It is not the biggest whale in the world but not small either

As said the trip in or out is quite scenic. It starts with a bit of a headache for the Navigators due to the presence of the Right Whale. It has one of its major habitats just outside the port. There are only about 300 left in the world and thus they are heavy protected. The USCG maintains a traffic post especially for them  (compulsory as well) and as soon as a ship reports in that they have seen a Right Whale near the shipping lanes, all alarm buttons are being pushed and the locations reported in, are broadcast on regular intervals to the whole shipping world. There are speed restrictions and from our side we all have received “Whale avoidance” training that takes into account how various species of whales react and behave.

Mother and Calf. Most Right Whales are completely oblivious of what goes on around them.

That makes it here a bit scary as the Right Whale does not behave. It does not react to ships, not to vibrations, not to movement; it does its own thing and nobody has a real clue what that is.  As a result they were easy prey in the past and nowadays they are easy to get a collision with. Hence the USCG having a sort of Traffic Control system in place to warn and guide the ships around them.

Once past that area the ship sails into Boston Harbor. On one of the hills on the south side you can see a prominent building what once was a mental hospital. It is now not in use as such, but every time I see it I have to wonder why they would build something like that on such a prominent position. It could not have been very peaceful for the patients inside to see the whole world around them and then not be able to get to it.  Then you get, also on the south side, the Fort that protects Boston Harbor. From the ship high up, you can basically look over it and see what the logic of fortification was in the 16^th. and 17^th. Century.

Then comes the bane of each cruise ship captains life, the container terminal. There is plenty of room to sail around the container cranes and the ships, but they for some reason tend to arrive and depart around the same time as we do. If not on arrival, then it is in the afternoon. As the Cruise Terminal is behind the container terminal it means that if one of those Container Vessels is maneuvering it effectively blocks the whole area.

Today that happened on departure. By 16:15 the ms Maasdam was all ready to go with 1,233 happy campers on board, which means a full house, and then they started moving a containership around. So we were all delayed by a good 30 minutes. Luckily Bar Harbor is not that far away, so the loss of time can easily be absorbed in the schedule.  And as sunset was later in the evening, everybody could enjoy a nice sail- away. The ships Bars were full which made the Bar Staff very happy.

Tomorrow we are in Bar Harbor again; the good thing is that there is no immigration inspection this time and thus no delay in the early clearance of the ship. The bad part is the ship has been assigned the North Anchorage which is wide and more in the open but results in a longer tender distance. The south anchorage has been given to one of the “Apartment of the Seas” of RCI which will deliver close to 4,000 guests ashore during the day.

The weather forecast calls for sunny weather but windy, with other words a regular Bar Harbor day with great sailing weather.

It was sunny and that was good for the guests as it brings out the best of Bar Harbor. It was very windy which did not please the Captain as it meant that the ship was yawning like a drunken sailor behind its anchor. It also caused for a wobbly tender ride to the shore. The yawning of the ship (that is when the ship is swinging wildly behind its anchor) can be mostly controlled by using the stern thruster.  It will stop the stern from swinging and it is then possible to create a bit of a lee alongside the tender platform by keeping the wind just off the nose. But it creates a lot of strain on the anchor chain and with it comes the danger of a dragging anchor. As the ship had been allocated the south anchorage, which is the best anchorage for having the shortest tender distance, it has to drop anchor in close proximity of large numbers of lobsterpots.  If the anchor would drag then the chain might sweep through those lobsterpots, creating a lot of damage and that would result in a lot of upset locals. So for the earlier part of the morning the bridge was on high alert and watched each little movement of the ship with close attention. Later on in the morning the wind eased off and the ship settled a little bit better. Also good for the guests, as the waves are created by the wind only here in the harbor, so the moment the wind started to ease off the waves also reduced in height, making it easier to run the tender service.

While this was going on, all the guests on board had to go through US immigration by the CBP.  The USA is one of the few countries in the world that still insist of seeing everybody face to face when they come into the USA for the first time, even if there was only one foreign port in between two USA ports.  Most other countries are happy with either a passport check or scrutinizing the passenger list which is normally sent 3 or 4 days ahead of the ships arrival. The USA does both. Luckily the authorities in Bar Harbor are very much trying to make the process as painless as possible. That is not always the case as it varies from port to port in the USA as it is up to the local supervisor to decide on the process.  Here either the supervisor had a good night’s sleep or it was just a very professional person. With making it easy I mean that once the guests were through the passport check they could go ashore directly. There are some ports were the supervisor insists that everybody stays on board until the very last person has been seen. That is sometimes a very long and drawn out affair as guests who are not planning to go ashore sometimes just bluntly refuse to go. Then it takes time to get them there.

Today all the guests showed up as requested, the CBP inspectors did their work efficiently and quickly and by 09.30 the ship was fully cleared. 90 minutes to get 1230 guests through (plus me) is not bad going.

In port as well was the Seabourn Quest. Since 2011 Seabourn is a sort of subsidiary/ sister company of Holland America although the product is totally different. We share office space in Seattle, there is some integration in the operational side, but for the rest the two companies are still very much on their own. Seabourn started out with three small ships but since it is part of the HAL group, three larger ships have been added and the three small ones sold on to Windstar Cruises. A company that for a long time was also part of Holland America. The Seabourn Odyssey, the Seabourn Sojourn and the Seabourn Quest are three sister ships, roughly the size of our Prinsendam. They also have currently one ship under construction as well.

The Seabourn Quest. The newest of the 3 Seabourn ships.

The Quest was anchored on the North Anchorage which is a much wider anchorage but the tender distance is much longer plus the tenders have to sail through a gap between islands and are for most of the journey out of site of the Bridge. So both anchorages have pro’s and con’s and can give rise to long discussions among the captains which anchorage is preferable.  As the decision of where the ships will anchor is made by the local authorities, it makes not much difference who wins the argument and why.

Tomorrow is the last day of the cruise and the ship will use Boston as a change over port. The change over port is an important day for me as well as it gives me the chance to call my wife and do my laundry.  I normally use the Guest Laundry as during the cruise I do not dare to go there as you are not certain of your life inside. I have seen something close to World War III erupting several times in these laundry’s over the right to have the laundry basket or the audacity of somebody having thrown somebody else laundry out.

It supposed to be partly sunny and a partly rainy day tomorrow but it will be a noisy day as the Black Falcon – now called Cruise Port Boston, terminal is located right under the flight path of Boston International airport.

The weather turned out better than forecast. On arrival it looked like a gloomy day but in the course of the morning the sun came through and the forecasted wind did not show up at all. People do not come to Halifax for a day at the beach but to explore the town and the hinterland and then to have a bit of a cool and overcast day is not a bad thing at all. Going to visit the Titanic graves when the sun is burning at 30oC is something that takes out the enthusiasm very quickly. Continue reading

While Charlotte Town is located inside a bay on the south side of an island, for Sydney it is the other way around. It is located in a bay on the north side of an island, namely Nova Scotia, or New Scotland. Again the founding fathers found the most sheltered spot in the area to build a City. Same as with Charlotte Town; sheltered is a relative word as it can blow here enormously. In the past I have aborted the call at Sydney quite often. Either by not going in, or by going into the bay, having a look and then turning quickly around and racing back out again. With the wrong wind blowing it can be a scary place.

Every captain with a bit of wits about him, swings on arrival and docks nose out, so in case of a sudden spell of inclement weather, the ship can race to safe waters as quickly as possible. As a result the HAL ships always dock with the nose out.

Today there were no issues. The sun was shining, not doubt the birds were singing as well and there was no wind. Great weather to mess around with boats. Today was practice day for the Lifeboat trainees and they all have to learn how to drive a lifeboat. Getting the show people/ entertainers in the boat is always great fun as they treat everything as an adventure with the emotions running from scared to amazed, to excited, all in a matter of minutes. Today there was no difference and while the boat went down it was of course necessary to sing “Michel row your boat ashore”. And I do not mind at all to sit in a boat with a number of nubile young ladies who need some fatherly advice in how to run a lifeboat.  There are worse things in the world.

Captain Arno Jutten and Hotel Director Francaois Birarda supervising the cook – out

The rest of the crew were excited as well, as a crew barbeque had been organized. For the last four weeks the plans had been cancelled due to the rain but today we had glorious sunshine and all the crew streamed ashore to have lunch in the sun.  Most ships organize these sorts of things on a regular basis and in general it is very much appreciated by the crew.

As long as the cooks do not run out of food.

The Al-Fresco Crew Mess Room in Sydney

Most of our crew members are very slender and you would think that that was because they do not eat that much. On the contrary; it is mind boggling how much food gets consumed. Not only in the consumption of rice but also on a day like this when there is Corn on the Cob and steak on the menu. I enjoy a good dinner but there is no-way that I can keep up with these guys. Being small is obviously not a reason to eat about double what a much larger person would consume. And the cooks kept bringing more and more ashore to be enjoyed. It was very nice of the Port authorities to allow the ship to do this. Thank you very much of behalf of a lot of happy crew.

Sydney considers itself the fiddle capital of the world. In the dark winter months  music is very popular here and there is great interest, also among the younger population, for traditional Folk Music. Some very well known fiddlers come from this area.

I wonder if it is the biggest one in the world

And to let the world know, an enormous violin has been erected on the East side of the Pier. When the ship goes Northbound, towards Quebec, a group of fiddlers come on board to entertain the guests. Southbound as on this cruise, there is not enough time as the ship leaves early to get to Halifax on time.To get there, it has to sail first out of Sydney, then North East around Cape Breton and then has to come down the East Coast of Nova Scotia. Halifax is also situated inside, in a fjord in this case. So getting in there also takes time. As a result the schedule is quite tight on this stretch of the cruise and hence the ships sails at 1600 hrs. instead of later.

The weather forecast for tomorrow is a mixed bag. Sunny and wind still in the morning and then slowly changing to overcast with rain and increasing winds.  We will not be the only ship for change. Coming in after us is the Amadea (sailing for a German company) and the Carnival Splendor.  It will be a good day for the local shop keepers.  As Halifax considers itself the bag pipe capital of the world they cherish their Scottish roots, so there will be a lone piper on arrival, and if all goes well, a whole group of them on departure.  Halifax is located on Nova Scotia – New Scotland. I wonder if they would consider going independent of Canada if their brethren in Great Britain decide to split up from England next week.

This is one of my favorite ports of call.  Partly because the people here are very friendly, partly because pilot and port authority will do everything to support our port calls, partly because town is nearby and partly because the approach to the dock, and sailing out again is so nice.

Charlottetown is not a very sheltered port and cancellations in the early and late season are not uncommon but today was a wonderful day. Nearly wind still and the sun shining brightly.   Prince Edward Island or PEI as it is mostly known is an oblong island with a semi round hole on the south side, nearly in the middle of the Island. Inside that hole, churned into a semi lake by 3 meeting rivers, Charlotte Town is located. The founding fathers must have recognized that this was the most sheltered area of the island.

The Maasdam arrived at 06.30 at the Pilot Station and the Pilot came on board. We always have the same pilot. As a matter of fact he is really the only pilot but there is a backup in case he is not available. His father in law drives the pilot boat and his children act as the linesmen who pull the ropes ashore when the ship docks. Ma runs the administration. Call it a family affair but we like these people; they are very, very professional….. and helpful and that makes it very nice to dock the ship here.  There is only one dock, so only one ship can go alongside.

Three Rivers. One lower left, One top left and One top right. The lower right with the black course line is the way in and out.

If more ships are coming then they have to go to anchor, which is less pleasant as the anchorage is located at the junction of the currents produced by those three meeting rivers.  Not dangerous but the ship is literally spinning around its anchor 360o all day. The moment it swings out of the influence of the first river, it gets caught by the 2^nd river, etc. etc. etc. You are all day on full alert as you really do not know whether the anchor is holding or dragging as the reference points are changing all the time. So the captain is on the bridge all day, constantly watching the distances to the shore.

Not so today. The Maasdam is always the only ship on a Tuesday and thus it always dock.

The Brown Cliffs are slowly eroding and the houses on the top are not that far away.

The whole inland water is getting slowly bigger all the time, as the sides of the islands that are near the entrance are constantly eroding. It does not affect the approach channel too much as the water flow of the three rivers churns all the sediment to open sea. For the people who are living near the edge of the land it is a different story.

Quite a few houses, very nice houses, are coming closer and closer to the edge. According to local information, some home owners have already moved their house twice further inland but the sea keeps following. With the houses mainly made out of wood it seems to be fairly easy to jack them up and roll them a few 100 feet deeper into the back garden. One just has to hope that there is enough back garden to do so  ……. I suppose.

The ship always docks nose out here, apart from the fact that it makes the departure maneuver faster it is also handy in case the weather suddenly changes. If the ship would have to leave it would be a straight shot out and there would be less of a complication with the wind as would be the case if the ship would first have to swing around. Today there were no complications and the ship left in glorious sunlight. It was a perfect sail away.

Tomorrow we are in Sydney, Nova Scotia and for the first time in four weeks it is supposed to be dry and sunny. Good for the Captain and Hotel Director as they have planned a Crew Barbeque ashore on the dock; and good for me as I will go down with the lifeboat with the Entertainers to train them for their new function of Lifeboat Communicator.

The St. Lawrence river is an estuary river and when looking at it on a chart it looks like a wide converging funnel with a thin rope at the end (A rope with a thin pole alongside it, called the St. Lawrence Seaway).  Thin is of course relative, the river is quite wide otherwise sea going cruise ships could not sail all the way to Montreal. From there the maximum size of a ship is dictated by the width of the Locks in the St. Lawrence Seaway. Holland America used to have ships that would go all the way up the Seaway and were built to fit in with the maximum lock dimensions.

The ms Katsedyk of 1961

There was one little passenger ship called the Prinses Margriet (*) and a series of cargo ships all starting with the letter K in the name. Katsedijk, Kloosterdijk, Kerkedijk etc.etc. With the start of containerisation, those ships quickly disappeared from the scene and were redeployed to the Gulf of Mexico.

The ms Ryndam II passing Quebec on the way to Montreal.

We also had regular passenger ships going up the river in the 1950’s, mainly for the emigrant trade. The large express liners had been calling at Canadian ports since the 1920’s but did not go any further than Halifax while enroute to New York.  But in the 1950’s there were two small Passenger ships called the Maasdam (III) and the Ryndam (II) who trundled up the river to Quebec and Montreal in high summer.  I say “trundle” as with a maximum speed of barely 16 knots it took them some time. Especially with an adverse tide. Still, quite a few Europeans reached the New World that way and became Canadians in due course.

The river has not changed that much since then. Due to its shape, you are already nearly sailing in it before you realize that you are on a river and not sailing between some distant islands at the horizon. And that is the impression for all of us on board here as well. On departure Quebec we had the city on both sides but then the scenery changed quickly to lush green meadow lands interspersed with small hamlets, each with a very distinctive church, serving the needs of the surrounding agricultural communities. The river only widens very slowly but when it happens it resembles suddenly more a wide bay than a river.

So during the night and today the ship sailed with an average speed of 18 knots through this ever widening mouth of the river until it ended up in the open Ocean. From there it set sail to Prince Edward Island. Part of the River is regulated by Vessel Traffic Separation Schemes which keep the outgoing and incoming ships apart. That makes it fairly easy for the navigator to stay out of trouble. More focus is needed to comply with the environmental rules. The Maasdam also has a Zenon system which turns waste water back into fresh water but there are area’s on the river where even that sort of water cannot be discharged. There are Marine Sanctuaries with zero tolerance, anything closer to land than 4 miles is a no – no;  except when the river has an outgoing tide, then the rules are a bit more lenient. The idea is that whatever goes overboard is quickly diluted by the water flowing towards the sea. We have nothing to dilute as the Zenon system produces clean water but the rules are the same for all. Under USPH rules and Can Pub health rules we are not allowed to re-use this water, so it has to go somewhere. It is a nice puzzle for the navigator to keep an eye on where that “somewhere” is.

In the old days we used to approach Charlotte Town from the West Side, going under the  Confederation Bridge. That is not allowed anymore due to the large numbers of Lobster pots near the fairway. Sometimes these pots are in the fairway.  But if a lobster pot gets its line tangled up in one of the propellers, it is the end for the lobster pot but the anchor rope could damage the seal in the propeller shaft that keeps the water out and the lubrication oil in. The ship does not want water leaking into the ship and the locals do not want oil leaking out although lubrication oil normally evaporates before it can do any harm.  So the ships now have to go the long way around and approach from the East, sailing North around Prince Edward Island as the entrance to Charlotte town is located on the south side,

The Maasdam will approach the pilot station at 06.30 tomorrow morning and will be docked about an hour later.  We are expecting glorious weather tomorrow. Windstill on arrival and a gentle breeze later on. Sunny skies all day long, but cool temperatures. Cool, as Autumn is quickly approaching.

The ms Prinses Margriet could carry just over a 100 passengers.

(*) The Prinses Margriet never had a DAM name. She was bought from a company called the Oranje Line which names all its ships after members of the Royal Family (Which is from the House of “Oranje”) Prinses Margriet was and still is the God mother of the Dutch Merchant Navy and therefore Holland America decided not to rename the ship.

07 Sept. 2014; Quebec, Canada.

The pilots did not have any issues with the bridge time, the tides followed the predicted schedule and the Maasdam slipped under the Bridge without any challenges. Then she docked shortly after. This was very shortly after as the ship went straight alongside the downtown dock.

That is not always the case as it depends from which side the current is coming. Unless there is a very special situation, a ship on the St. Lawrence River will always dock with the nose into the current. This means that when it is ebbing (the current follows the flow of the river to the sea) the ship will dock with the bow stream up wards. When it is flooding (the tide of the sea is going against the flow of the river) the ship will dock with the nose into the flood. It will dock with the bow in the direction of the sea, where the flood is coming from.  Although the St. Lawrence River can flow very strongly, especially in the spring, the flow is normally weaker than the upcoming flood and thus the flood is the current to keep an eye on.

This is the normal sequence of docking. However there might be exemptions and I have been docking at times where the downward flow of the river was cancelled out by the upward flow of the tide and as a result there was no current near the docks. In the middle of the river there was a lot of turmoil with swirling currents, where the two water flows fought for supremacy but near the docks, where the current is normally a little bit less, there was nothing.  Then the pilots allow the ship to dock any side alongside and thus you try to dock with the bow in the direction of where you go next.

This time the Maasdam could dock quickly as it was flooding, so the ship already had the bow pointing the right way. It was also the direction of where we would go down river later and that would ensure a speedy departure. If it had been ebbing, then the ship would have had to turn in the river and then find its way back to the dock. That would have taken almost an hour longer.

Chateau Frontenac towering over the port of Quebec

But by 3 am it was all fast and all involved could go back to bed. Daylight was around 0600 and that meant that early birds could go ashore at that time. As it is Sunday today not much happened in the early morning, which is always a perfect time to explore the old city. Quebec is a wonderful town. On the Holland America rating of ports it scores year after year the highest of all the different ports that we visit in the world and that is over 300. Most people also take the chance to visit Chateau Frontenac, which is not really a Castle but a hotel. But it certainly looks like a castle. It was built in the days when the Railways were being laid through Canada and connections were being made with the Ocean Liners. No expense was spared and only the best was good enough. It is really wonderful to walk around in the down stairs area, where the old style charm of the place has been completely retained. I really wish that I would have the opportunity to walk that Castle/Chateau/Hotel from the top of the roof to the deepest dungeon, just to see what they put in such a building in those olden days.

It was a cool day with real nippy weather in the morning but when the sun came out it was a glorious day to be ashore. As it was Sunday, half the town was on parade in front of the ship in the afternoon, as the pier doubles up as a sort of small boulevard, cum Public Park.  It gave the Quebecois the chance to see a Holland America ship but also to see how the sailors were cleaning and painting the outside, as the Staff Captain had arranged for a cherry picker to be used for the duration of the call.

Tomorrow is a sea day and then the next port of call is Charlotte Town on Prince Edward Island. That is a tight run as the ship has to go the long route due to the lobster pot season but that is for the next blog when we get close to the next port of call.

The concrete dock walls of Quebec. Please note how the fender is pushed off the wall by the current that runs between the dock wall and the ship.

Departure from Quebec is normally easy; the current tries to get between the ship and the dock, either from the stern (ebbing) or from the bow (flooding).

Whatever the direction of the current, it will push you off the dock mainly due to the fact that all the Dock walls in Quebec are from concrete and solid so any water that comes against it is bounced off again. And if the ship lets go of it mooring lines, then it will bounce off as well.

The weather forecast for tomorrow will be chilly but sunny, with strong winds while the ship is sailing down the St. Lawrence Estuary and then later a gentle breeze when it enters open waters.

And so we arrived on the good ship Maasdam in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on the 5^th of Sept.  Canadian Customs were carrying out random in depth inspections and I was one of the lucky ones. Thus I had to wait for 90 minutes in the holding pen at the airport, then had a 2 minute conversation about who I was and what I was going to do, before I was deemed not to be danger to human society at large and Canada in particular. This is something that happens to every crewmember all the time when coming into the USA so it was nothing special. However as the Canadians do it randomly without making any exception to nationality (including their own) or race or religion, it was quite interesting to see how diverse the reactions were from people from various cultural backgrounds.  Varying from dignified resignation (India), to total confusion and mis-understanding (China, Korea), to highly indignant (Americans), to total bewilderment (Canadians). It was most interesting and made the time pass quickly. Montreal suffered from a very hot day, 32oC. and my hotel had AC in the rooms but not in the corridors as it was built around an indoor swimming pool, where the architect had tried to recreate a tropical paradise. Well today it was a real tropical journey to get from the room to the restaurant so the architect had more than succeeded in his/her ambitions. Continue reading