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IMPORTANT NOTICE

June 13, 2009 / Captain Albert / 1 Comment

As I announced in December; the plan was for me to leave the Avid Cruiser website and go completely in house with Holland America Line.

There were some technical difficulties with getting all the historical pages over, which you can view on the right hand side of my main blog page.

However during this weekend the Holland America blog people will move everything over to the HAL Blog site. So by Monday USA – Pacific morning time I should be fully operational from within the HAL site.

While the transfer takes place I will not be able to upload any blogs. This means that I will upload the 13, 14 and 15 of June blog on the 16th. I do not know yet if the www.Captainalbert.com link will still work after monday but I hope so.

In the mean time I would like to ask all my readers to look for my blog on the HAL website from Monday onwards, where it should look and function in the same way as you are currently used to.

Thank you for your continued interest.

Captain Albert.

12 June 2009, At Sea, Gulf of Biscay.

June 13, 2009 / Captain Albert / 0 Comments

Today a relaxing sea day. We are sailing along the Portuguese and Spanish coast towards our next port of call Hendaye, in France. This morning at 08.30 we passed Cape Finisterre and changed course to the East as we came North of Spain. The weather changed noticeably the moment we came around this Cape. Here currents come together and also the weather gets more under the influence of the North Atlantic. Thus, although the sun was shining, it was quite cool outside. However as there was no wind, it was a very pleasant day. While the guests had a nice relaxing day, this was of my busiest days as far as non navigational activities were concerned. Continue reading

11 June 2009, Lisbon, Portugal.

June 12, 2009 / Captain Albert / 0 Comments

I was raving about the weather yesterday but Lisbon decided to go one better and the sailing up the river was fantastic. We had a heavy swell running over the bar at the entrance of the river which made the ship pitch considerably for a short while but that was the only thing to mar a prefect arrival. There was a long ocean swell running from the N.E generated by some nasty and windy weather on the North Atlantic but in Lisbon it was wind still and sunny. Thus we happily trundled up the river while the sun rose over the city. While the sun rose we were treated to an un-expected spectacle, a green flash during sun rise. We see the green flash quite often during sunset in open waters, but this was the first time that we had one while entering port and over land and in the morning. Continue reading

Captain Albert: 10 June 2009, Cadiz, Spain

June 11, 2009 / Captain Albert / 0 Comments

Captain Albert Schoonderbeek

While Northern Europe had strong winds with tornado watches and torrential rains with flood alerts, we had “to cope” with flat calm sea’s and sunny skies. So with that happy thought on our mind we approached the pilot station early in the morning as we had to be docked by 7 am. From the pilot to the dock normally takes about 35 minutes but docking took longer this time as we had been assigned another berth. Behind us was the Adventure of the Seas who with 340 meters of length was given our normal dock as it was much longer.

We had to dock at the cross dock, which is about 250 meters long. The Prinsendam being 204 meters means that I have plenty of space; it just takes some time to “angle” the ship in towards this cross dock. Thus we were at the pilot station earlier than otherwise would have been the case. As I had been up from 1 am until 3 am for passing through the Straits of Gibraltar, I had had a short night but a beautiful arrival into Cadiz made up for it. Cadiz is facing to the East at the end of a curved estuary and when the sun rises, the reddish/golden glow tends to paint the white buildings of the city in a sort of soft pink. Very pretty, when you happen to be awake to see it. The port was virtually empty apart from a ferry boat running on the Cadiz to Tenerife service. This ferry boat had been bumped from the cross berth to make space for us, in the same way as we had been bumped by the Adventure of the Seas.

10 June 2009, Cadiz, Spain.

June 11, 2009 / Captain Albert / 3 Comments

Captain Albert: 09 June 2009, At Sea

June 10, 2009 / Captain Albert / 0 Comments

Captain Albert Schoonderbeek

As expected it was a beautiful day at sea while we sailed around the south side of Spain from Barcelona to Cadiz. This stretch of water is called the Alboran Sea after a small island that is located slap bang in the middle of it. As soon as we were out of Barcelona we “moved with the flow”; all the traffic going in the direction of Gibraltar is basically on the same track line and creates a sort of highway at sea. In the same way as you have a motorway on land, with the difference that there is no restriction in leaving, crossing or sitting still on a sea highway. Traffic going to the harbors in the Northern part of Spain, the Southern part of France and the Northern part of Italy are in the other lane a bit more to the south. On the radar you see 20 to 30 ships nicely separated by an invisible line going one way or the other.

09 June 2009, At Sea.

June 10, 2009 / Captain Albert / 3 Comments

Captain Albert: 08 June 2009, Barcelona, Spain

June 9, 2009 / Captain Albert / 0 Comments

Captain Albert Schoonderbeek

In the past we had to travel through a bridge to get to our dock at the World Trade Centre. I assume because everybody got fed up with having to wait for this bridge being open all the time, they decided to give the older port area its own entrance. When the new port area was under developed it did not matter that much as hardly anybody had to go over the bridge but when the cruises ships started to dock there, the waiting times became very inconvenient. Now the ferries and the smaller cruise ships, plus the fishery traffic and the traffic for the dry docks have their own entrance, relieving the pressure on the bridge considerably.

08 June 2009, Barcelona, Spain.

June 9, 2009 / Captain Albert / 4 Comments

Captain Albert: 07 June 2009, Marseilles, France

June 8, 2009 / Captain Albert / 1 Comment

Captain Albert Schoonderbeek

The weather turned out to be beautiful indeed and that made approaching Marseilles very pleasant. The wind had died off completely and the sun was shining straight over the hills making the area look very “Mediterranean”. It was an active port day as far as traffic was concerned with the Prinsendam leading the parade. We were followed by the Coral (Lois Cruise Lines) The Costa Pacifica (Costa Cruises) and the Bleu de France (latest off-shoot of Carnival to get it into the French market). For the rest there was a whole line of ferries coming in as well about an hour later.

The entrance to the new port of Marseilles is at angle of about 90o with the approach course and only 100 meters wide. Thus there is about 110 feet clearance on either side when the Prinsendam enters in the middle. With nice weather not much of a problem but when the wind blows on right angles over the entrance, it is a tight hole to get through with a drifting ship. On our approach we were listening with amazement to the Coral who was about 10 miles behind us and was giving a pilot time of 5 minutes before us. Somehow the mathematics were not correct here, because there was no way that the ship could over take us with only 20 minutes to go. So it did not happen at all but the pilot going to the Coral had difficulty boarding as the Coral was still going much too fast when she was almost at the pilot station. So while the Coral pilot tried to sort that out we proceeded into the port with our own pilot and a nice and sedate speed.