Today we finished our three day Senior Management Conference or SMC and we are now all returning to the ships so that the 2^nd group can attend next week. That means that I will be flying from Atlanta to San Jose in Costa Rica tomorrow morning. There I will say overnight and then the next morning will be transported to Puerto Caldera where the ship is. The ships staff on board will then go the other way for their meeting. That ride between San Jose and Puerto Caldera is always of great interest and as it is mainly downhill, steeply downhill and some bus drivers have the most peculiar ideas about what a safe speed is to go down the mountain, and when or not to overtake. I have made that ride twice before and in both cases the cab driver considered the brake a nuisance and oncoming traffic of only minor concern. Their concern, not his. So that will be an interesting experience again. Continue reading

Our run from Half Moon Cay to Ft. Lauderdale takes us north of Nassau and south of Freeport through the North West Providence Channel. There used to be a time, when the only ships that you saw were cruise ships on Saturday and Sunday, coming and going from Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Then the development of Freeport started and they now have the (Carnival) shipyard and a large container port and that has increased the traffic enormously. On top of that the oil terminal has gained more prominence in the last decade and that means that this stretch of water can be quite busy. There are always a few containerships and tankers floating around waiting for a berth to become available and because of that there is also regular traffic in and out of the port.  Those drifting ships are normally not a problem for us as such, as they are well lit and stopped in the water. As we know why they are there we can deal with them without any problem.  The only issue is that most of the time they are right in the way. As is understandable, each captain wants to drift as far away from any obstacle possible and that is then of course right in the middle of North West Providence channel. There where our course line runs. Continue reading

With the day dawning we approached West Bay our anchorage area for Half Moon Cay.  It was nearly wind still and the sky nearly cloudless, so we knew that it was going to be a very good day. And good weather you need here. Although it is a wonderful destination for the guests we are totally reliant on the weather. The island is low and offers no shelter whatsoever; so with a strong wind from the East you blow from your anchorage. If there is too much wind from the West, you get blown onto the beach.  Squalls, with wind gusts are frequent and thus you have to be very much aware of the situation of the day. Most of us captains are very ambivalent towards the area, torn between our enthusiasm for a great destination and the apprehension about the unpredictable weather that can happen here. Still today my worries were more positive. I dropped the hook just before 7 am and by keeping one engine slightly astern all day to counter act the insetting current, the ship stayed nicely in position. At 07.30 the Zuiderdam was at anchor and all was well in the world. Continue reading

Early this morning we left the Caribbean Sea behind and sailed through the Windward Passage into the North Atlantic. The area we call the Old Bahama Channel. Using the Windward Passage is the shortest route to go from Cartagena to the Bahamas. When you leave the Caribbean Sea proper, you sail between Jamaica to the West and Haiti to the East. This is called the Jamaica Passage. From there, keeping Haiti on the starboard side, you proceed straight north towards the Windward Passage which is located between Haiti and Cuba. Together with the Mona Passage (further to the East) the Windward is one of the most used passages to get in and out of the Caribbean Sea. Mona is mostly for ships to and from Europe and the Windward for ships coming from the East Coast of the USA and going to Panama. Ships from the Gulf of Mexico of course use the Yucatan channel situated of the West point of Cuba. Continue reading

The great thing of this cruise is the number of sea days that form part of it. We have one or two ports and then we have a sea day again; and now in this case there are two sea days in a row. It makes the whole cruise so much more relaxed. Also a cruise is much more than just visiting port after port. Going to a lot of ports in a cruise is very interesting of course but then your cruise ship becomes a sort of overnight ferry-vehicle that transports you there. All programs and activities that HAL offers on board have to take a step into the background as it is port after port after port. Shipside has on those cruises the problem of getting our “fixed” items in, such as parties and meetings, especially the Mariners parties. For those you need a sea day and if there is only one in the cruise, that is the day it has to be. That day is then crammed with all the other activities, including the disembarkation speech and crew farewell. Most of the time that is the last day of the cruise and then the guests need to pack during that day as well. So there is much to say for having a few sea days in a cruise and on this one we have the luxury of having quite a few and everybody is enjoying them to the fullest. Continue reading

 Well ahead of the two other cruise ships we approached the pilot station at 0800 hrs. Although the pilots in Cartagena are good, I still have still not figured, after all my years of coming here, how it all works. We normally call Port Control, which has a control tower at the entrance of the Bay but they can never tell us what is going on. They take our ETA and then refer us to the pilot, who might or might not hear us depending if the VHF in the pilot boat is switched on. Then when you ask the pilot for a traffic update you get referred back to port control. They might then give you some information or they will refer you back to the pilot. If information is given it might not be correct as the pilots might decide among themselves to change the sequence of the ships sailing. Or a ship might not sail at all and somehow that information got lost somewhere. Cartagena is a very organized port, once you are in the sequence of the port process but it is always a challenge to find out what is going on. So we always focus on our two main concerns; what time will the pilot make it to the ship as we are not allowed to go in without one, and secondly is the channel clear. The latter is important as the Boca Chica access channel to the bay of Cartagena is not wide enough for ships to pass each other. As a matter of fact it gets smaller and more narrow every year. According to the pilot the harbor master keeps moving the buoys but does not advise anybody why. Continue reading

Well, the day started a lot earlier than expected as at 01.45 the Lady Navigator of the 12 to 4 watch hung on the phone with the exciting news that the Canal authorities wanted to change our (originally approved) ETA. Nothing new here, it happens all the time. So instead of being there at 04.15 we were now looking asked to be there at 04.00 at the latest. There is not much you can do about it. If you say no, you run the fair risk that you are then scheduled near the end of the convoy and that means that you are out late; and that means that you might be late for the next port. Not something I really wanted to contemplate so my answer was yes and gave orders to crank the ship up to a higher speed. By 3 am. I was on the bridge for the final approach and to do the drifting near the sea buoy while the ship was being cleared. Continue reading

The weather took a dramatic turn for the day, the aftermath of the hurricanes, now far to the north still caused the gathering of heavy rain clouds and it rained cats and dogs for most of the day; occasionally accompanied by a thunder clap. Well at least what comes down today will not come down tomorrow when we are in the canal. For the canal we are expecting overcast weather which might turn to sunny around noon time and only a chance of showers in the late afternoon. As we are expecting an early transit, I have been asked to be at the sea buoy by 04.15 in the morning that rain should not affect us too much. Still we just have to wait and see. I have seldom made a PC transit without having had at least one downpour during the day. The early transit will give the guests the option to see one set of locks at Dawn, one during sun rise and one in the late morning, so at least two of them during a period that it will not be too hot. Which is a good thing, as we had several instances in the past where people simply fainted due to heat and/or dehydration. Continue reading

Today we had the first of our two sea days. Late last evening we passed the Norwegian Pearl which was trundling along with a speed of 12 knots on her way to Vera Cruz (near Puerto Caldera) in Costa Rica.  You can do the stretch from Puerto Quetzal to there in one night if you make 23 knots but most ships do not go that fast, nor want to face the fuel cost and thus opt for a sea day in between. We have two sea days as we have to travel a distance of 889 miles to get to the Balboa seabuoy. Our course is taking us in one straight line down to the border of Costa Rica and Panama and we can do that because the land is veering away from us here.  Last night we kept a distance of approx. 5 miles to the coast, today we were more than 65 miles away and that remained so until late afternoon when the coast was coming closer again. In the meantime we passed the borders of Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.  Due to the strange twist in the continent here, some of these countries have large parts of the land connected to the ocean and some only a few miles. Continue reading

By 03.30 I was woken up by the Officer of the Watch advising me that it was time to poke my nose out of the bridge window again. With the wakeup call came the cheery news that Quetzal port control was advising that there was 20 feet of swell running into the port entrance. A remark like that gets you woken up very fast. The port entrance has a depth of 45 feet, so minus 20 leaves 25 and that is not even enough for the ship to get in, let alone the danger of such a swell. Although I was expecting more swell (there are two hurricanes blowing in the East Pacific, Jovan and Erwin) it should not have been that much. On top of that there was a tropical downpour with strong winds over the port, so my first thought was; this is going to be a day at sea. When I arrived on the bridge, I picked up the VHF and called Port Control myself. The voice of the captain normally results in more action that the scheduled called of the ships watch officer. After a lot of Spanish confusion the 20 feet was downgraded to 12. I was still not happy so I demanded to talk to the pilot. He came on line and advised it was only 4 feet. That I could believe as at that moment a cargo ship the Novograd was coming out. It was being banned to the anchorage to let the cruise ships in to use the dock.  While I was a happy man now, I think that the Novograd captain was less content. Continue reading