During the evening we crossed the Straits of Florida and then during the remainder of the night we sailed under Freeport towards Half Moon Cay. In the early morning we felt the ocean swell as Half Moon Cay is at the edge of the Bahama Bank facing the North Atlantic. Officially the island is called Little San Salvador Island and next to it is San Salvador Island which is larger and has the claim to fame that Columbus discovered America here in 1492. There are several islands that claim that fame and if they are all correct then Columbus must have been busier with landing at all these islands than being occupied in figuring out why he was not in India as he wanted to be.

The Zuiderdam at anchor on the edge. The red triangle is the safety zone. If the ship drifts out of it, then there must be something wrong and the Navigators will take action.

However we knew where we were going as we have been there before. So by 07.30 the good ship Zuiderdam was at anchor and the shore tenders were coming out.  We have large tenders available here and that speeds up the disembarkation to the island considerably. 5 runs to the island and the ship is empty. We anchor here in a similar way as we do in Grand Cayman, at the edge of the island, with the bow in about 30 feet of water and the stern in about 1000 feet of water. The island is rising quite steeply out of the depths of the ocean. With the hook down, only the stern can move and that stern is kept in position by keeping one of the Azipods running and setting the pod under such an angle that the ship is kept from drifting onto the reef and also not yawning too much.

The “Half Moon cay” shore tender and the “Half Moon Clipper” for provisions docked alongside the ship.

Holland America has leased part of the island from the Bahamian government since 1996 and as it is a very long term lease so big investments have been made to make it the most popular private Island in the Caribbean. We are neighbors with Princess, Disney and NCL, who have their islands further to the West, but I understand from various prizes which we received through the years that HMC is considered the best one. It is dedicated to HAL ships but when we are not there, then Carnival is allowed to call here as well; but there will never be two ships of a different brand together. The island can easily handle two ships and today I could see it myself. With 2000 guests ashore, it was still very empty. In the coming cruises the Zuiderdam will meet up with the Eurodam and the Nieuw Amsterdam and then the island will be a little bit fuller.

All prepared for a very last minute return to the ship.

I hopped ashore today to see what they had been adding in the last few years, and the first thing which caught my eye was the waiting area to return to the ship. If it is a nice day, all the guests are coming back at the same time and as the tenders cannot handle this, you have to wait. Before everybody had to stand in the burning sun while waiting (after having been burnt in the sun already all day) but now a covered area has been created. Here the guests go through the security scanner before they can walk straight onto the shore tender. The only thing which is missing is a small bar where they sell Heineken. A small pint while waiting in line would just be my piece of cake. The guide – rope – lanes are not so much in use for our guests as they come back fairly staggered but when there is a 3500+ Carnival ship in, then they are needed due to the long lines by the last minute returns.

The inside of the pirate ship. A bit strange to see our own bar tenders working ashore.

The other thing I had not seen yet, although it was built a few years ago, was the pirate ship.  Inside the hull is a bar with a band stand where they play Calypso music. It is just across from the BBQ house which is the main focal point of the island apart from the beach. All food and drink outlets are manned by the ship’s crew, while the facilities are being looked after by the Bahamians who come to the island each day with one of the boats. Apart from the island manager and those who look after the horses there is not anybody living on HMC. They all come from next door Eleuthera.

The Barbeque hall is a covered but open area with the open kitchen along one length and self serving buffets on a 90o angle at several intervals.

The food and drink all comes from the ship and is taken to the island by a special tender, the Half Moon Clipper and whatever is left over, returns the same way just before departure.  That departure was set for 15.00 hrs. and then the Zuiderdam turned her nose to the south, heading for Oranjestad Aruba where we are scheduled to arrive two days from now at 1 pm.

The weather looks good, we had a hurricane in the area, Kate, but she turned to the north and did not create more wind there that can normally blow. But because she came by, it “sucked” all the wind away and today we had no wind at all.  So it was a very warm day but as we are on a Caribbean Cruise that is what it is all about.

And thus we docked in the very early morning at 04.30 hrs. Although I am not involved with the routine ships operation I still could enjoy it because as soon as the ship was docked the Shell/ Break doors were opened, ready for offloading luggage and as luck would have it my cabin was just above it. Whatever you try on a ship, construction and design wise, you will always hear something somewhere sometime. That why it is a ship and not an apartment building. Luckily the shell doors only open up in the home port at an early hour and then the guests have to wake up anyway. Time for breakfast and then time to disembark. 

For disembarking I was part of the process today as having the legal status of an L visa traveler, the immigration officers could not wait to meet me and I had to show my face in the terminal once all the guests had disembarked. After having yet received another stamp in my passport I was declared free to go onto American soil. It is a pity that the CPB uses the same stamp at every airport and every ships port otherwise I would have by now have a very nice collection. But they use the same one everywhere and so my passport pages are just blue and red. Getting back on board was possible as soon as the “zero count” was achieved, meaning that indeed everybody had disembarked.

In the meantime USCG inspection was going on with the necessary alarms and whistles and on the pier it was also the hectic activity of unloading baggage, loading provisions and later on with loading baggage again. But with all this going on the crew still managed to do what it had to do and that was to satisfy the demands and requirements of the USCG inspection so by the end of the day we could sail with the required certificate duly received and stamped.

The Zuiderdam is now starting an 11 day cruise, which will also see the ship popping in and out of the Panama Canal by means of making a turn in the Gatun Lake. But we will start the cruise with a call at Half Moon Cay where we will be tomorrow.

Not un-common for Ft. Lauderdale, our departure was somewhat delayed due to late arriving luggage. This is an issue we seldom have when sailing in Europe as most guests come in the day before and if they don’t, then they arrive mostly with own transportation. For cruises out of Florida this is not the case, a lot of guests fly in on the day and the luggage is not always flying with them at the same time or to the same place.  Sometimes the problem can be alleviated with having the luggage come to the next port. For a Tampa cruise that works quite well as the next day is a call at Key West. For this cruise it does not work as our next port of call is Half Moon Cay and there is no easy way of getting anything there. Everything comes by ship, our own ship. So if the captain can afford to wait, then the captain will wait.  We are now looking at a few thousand dollars of extra fuel to make up for the lost time but it is all about avoiding dis-satisfied guests, even if we on the ship cannot do anything about lost luggage. We were not the only ones who were delayed as the Seabourn Odyssey only managed to pull out just ahead of us and the Celebrity Equinox followed directly behind us.

We blew the ships whistle loud and long for this Lady and her flag.

Sailing out of Ft. Lauderdale is always good fun as much to the chagrin of the competition we have a number of dedicated HAL cruisers in the apartment building at the fairway. Today there was only one HAL flag flying but I have seen 4 or 5 in the past.  Most ships are willing to give a flag to the residents who really live there as it all adds up to a nice show. (I do check if guests are really living there as the flags are not cheap; so proof of I.D is required and then it depends on how many spare flags we have on board. Ocean weather is not kind to flags and we go through a lot of them at a steady pace.

Tomorrow we are at Half Moon Cay and I hope to hop ashore there, as they keep adding attractions to the island and I have not been ashore there for several years.

Weather for tomorrow:  very warm and no wind. 86oF /30oC, partly cloudy leaning to very sunny.

Well the traffic was less than expected; the Carnival Ecstasy had an overnight stay and left in the morning and that meant that today we had about 2500 less people ashore.  We arrived at 07.00 hrs. with the Carnival Valor behind us at the horizon. We swung the ship on arrival and thus the Valor had to slow down a little bit until the turning basin was empty, but that is the danger if you set your arrival time too close to another ship. The Valor docked in the end sb. side nose in next to us to reduce the docking time as she had a short stay, supposedly sailing by 14.30 this afternoon.

As you can see by the black line, ships progress went east of the track line and then drifted nicely back in again once coming into the harbor.

Nassau is not a difficult port as such. The wind is normally steady, the turning basin is large enough to even accommodate the Oasis of the Seas and since the Piers have been extended it is good docking here as well.  The biggest challenge is to get through the entrance with the wind full on the port beam. We had this morning a sort of Trade Wind blowing (Although the Bahamas are a little north of the official Trade Wind area) with a wind force 4 which pushed the ship, drifted it to the West.  To compensate for this the ship is steered more to the East and if you do not understand what is going on, you think it is heading straight for the rocks. But when coming closer and closer the wind is doing it’s bit and you are back in the middle and on the track line again when entering the port.

When swinging the Radar show a little blue ship which we call the predictor. It indicates where the ship will go (eventually) if the maneuver is not continued in the right direction.

Inside the harbor there is always less wind. The Hotels on Paradise Island behind the port break the wind, the ships already docked in the port do so to and any other obstructions such as vegetation, it all helps. We did have wind force 4 while outside but when in the turning basin it had reduced itself to a small wind force 3.  So the ship could be happily swung around and backed into the berth.

But if you do, then the predictor will show the exact movement to the dock, and then all it takes is breaking on time.

Most captains prefer to swing on arrival. As a rule of thumb there is normally less wind in the port in the morning and if you have the time, lying in port with the nose out makes it a lot easier for a quick departure if necessary. The docks are almost straight in line with the harbor entrance and leaving means a kick ahead and a minor course change to starboard and the ship is back into open waters.

Now to my remark of yesterday about the pigs. For some time some of the snorkel tours and now also some dedicated tours go past an un-inhabited island called Big Major Cay.  In the mists of time a number of pigs ended up on the island and as there was enough vegetation and fresh water they managed to survive and even thrive there. Slowly but steadily the pigs got an understanding with the people passing by and came swimming out for food. I never knew that pigs could swim but they are intelligent animals so why not? Dogs can swim, most cattle can swim and so can elephants. Thus swimming with pigs became an official tourist attraction. Once I found out about this, I thought maybe it would be something for us as well at Half Moon Cay. We already have swimming with stingray’s, so why not some porkers as well???

A long time ago my parents had friends who owned a sort of farm, or better said a regular house with a lot of land that was farmed on the side. As it was almost in the woods, there was the occasional issue of animal intruders coming out of the woods and human intruders going into the woods. My parent’s friends had found a very effective security system to deal with this menace.  A pig and a gaggle of geese. Both can by very territorial if you let them and the effects are often more spectacular than what a watch dog can achieve.  Once the pig (and this was a big boar) cornered two thieves who had planned a raid on the chicken coop and their pleas for mercy could be heard half a mile down the road. Foxes attacking the chicken coop were dealt with by the Geese, also very effectively. Whenever I now see or hear about pigs I have to think about this guard-pig. I wonder if these pigs on their own island are also so effective in keeping intruders out.  I know they do welcome tourists as they bring food; which is a major point of focus in the lives of pigs. (http://www.bahamas.com/swimmingpigs)

The Zuiderdam will sail tonight around 6 pm. heading for our final destination Ft. Lauderdale and dock at Pier 26 in Port Everglades.  The ship will be docked by tomorrow morning 04.30 and we are hoping to have the CBP inspectors on board by 05.00 so we can get all the crew through the immigration inspection before the USCG comes on board for their inspection.  As it is a Monday it is not as busy as during the weekend and thus we are scheduled to be in port only with the Celebrity Equinox.

Weather for Fort Lauderdale:  Mostly sunny with temperatures around 86oF /30oC.

It is getting warm outside. The crew are starting to walk around closing the doors to the outside decks and also the inner glass doors to keep the cold air in and the warm air outside.  Which is unfortunately as about as effective as carrying coals to Newcastle but they try. The wind is still on the quarter and that does not help with cooling things down either. At least with a Trans Atlantic cruise you can slowly get accustomed to the change in temperatures, it is not as drastic as when you travel by airplane. By tomorrow the guests should be fairly well prepared for what will hit them ashore.

And if it is already so nice and warm in the open sea where the water always cools things down a bit, then we might have a very warm day in Nassau tomorrow.  The weather forecast gives a full sunny day with temperatures of 85oF or 29oC but with a gentle breeze. Tomorrow is a Sunday and in the old days it meant that in the morning everything was closed until after church. During this call we have 5 ships in port so I expect that commerce will win out in this case.

Apart from us, there will the Enchantment of the Seas, the Majesty of the Seas (both RCI); the Carnival Ecstasy and the Carnival Valor (both Carnival) in port. So we will have a good 10,000 cruise guests invading the local strawmarket and adjacent shops.  Some have already confided in me that they will go directly to the big Casino and resort just behind the port on Paradise Island. As a non-gambling man I find it hard to see the fascination in going to another casino while you have one on board, in both you lose your money so what is different, but I seem to miss the point somehow.  The casino is a major attraction for cruise guests.

Nassau in the quieter days of the 1980s when two cruise ships was a busy day. This postcard showing the Noordam (III) and the Homeric later Westerdam (II). The two ships together mean that the photo was made between 1986 and 1988.

Nassau has always been a cruise ship destination in the same way as Bermuda and  Havana in the old days, for the simple reason it is so close by. It is a short hop from Fort Lauderdale and Miami and even from New York it is not too far away. Holland America has been calling here since the 1930’s when the old Statendam and Veendam made cruises here in the depression years. Then it was still a sleepy resort, recovering from the wild days of piracy of Black Beard a long time ago and following British traditions in every way,  even driving on the wrong side of the road. (And often with American cars that do not have the steering wheel …………………..)

Nassau is more or less located in the Centre of the Grand Bahama Bank which stretches from Florida all the way down to the North tip of Haiti. The bank is made up of thousands of small islands, islets, reefs and sand and coral banks and you have to sail around it to get away from Florida. Either by following the coast line of Cuba when taking the south route or sailing south of Freeport when taking the northern route.

A sort of space 3 – D photo of the Grand Bahama Bank. The black”sock” in the middle is the Tongue of the Ocean and Nassau lies about one 3rd down from open sea. (Photo courtesy www.Terracolor.net)

Nassau is laying in a sort of natural deep bay surrounded by shallow area’s on three sides and thus to get away from it again you have to sail north before you can go either West (USA) or East (rest of the World) they call Nassau hilly, as it is on average a little bit higher than all the other islands and islets. Highest point is 37 meters (approx. 100 feet)If you want to see the highest point in the Bahamas, a real local mountain, then you have to go to Cat island which reaches a dizzying high of 61 meters. (approx. 170 feet)

Tomorrow the guests will have the choice of shopping, sightseeing, going to the casino, or doing a bit of water sport including snorkeling and pig feeding. More about the pigs tomorrow.

We are almost there. Tomorrow is the last sea day before we arrive at Nassau.  Although the guests are very happy, I start to sense a little restlessness of everybody wanting to run off the ship. My experience is that 5 days are about the limit that people can do before uneasiness sets in.  The longest stint at sea I have done without calling somewhere was on the old Nieuw Amsterdam when we sailed empty from Hilo in Hawaii to Sydney Australia for the Olympic Games.  12 days at sea. The whole crew loved the idea but after day 6 all the work was done, there were only so many parties we could throw and a certain weariness set in. We have not reached that state of weariness here on board, the guests are kept too well entertained for that but still it is a long period.  To serve the cruise business properly there should be an island on the crossing about every three days or so.  Maybe something for Carnival Corp. to think about. They are building docks everywhere to create new destinations so why not a new island. Talk to the Dutch dredging companies and in no time we would have a 2^nd Azores somewhere.

But that is not the case and thus we have a nice and long crossing. At least the weather is helping with following winds today. There was about 22 knots from the South East and as we are doing just over 15 knots at the moment, it meant that we had a very nice and gentle breeze of relative wind blowing over the decks. Perfect sea day.

My day was split in two parts today. This morning I gave training to the whole kitchen staff of how to respond to fire and other calamities and this afternoon it was time for my HAL History Lecture in the show lounge. With the latter, I guess, there were about 500 guests in the lounge and with most of them spreading out comfortably meant that I had a full house. Hopefully they enjoyed my 90 minutes of talking about DAM ships.

The audience in the kitchen was much smaller, about 40 cooks of various ranks and gradations, but the topic was a lot more serious.  After the Engine room the kitchen is the most dangerous part of the ship as there are open flames, hot oil and grease and metal surfaces (hot plates) which easily ignite if procedures are not being followed correctly. On top of that, each class of ship is different. Different in lay out and in different in equipment. Thus we hold constantly refresher classes. Most of our cooks have been with the company for years and much of what is brought up during the training is old hat so to speak. But there they still learn new things.

Although a lawn sprinkler is not exactly the same, it shows the size of the droplets clearly.

The most important one is Sprinkler versus HI-Fog.   A sprinkler system has long been the best answer to fires. If there is a flame and the flames go up, the bulb in the sprinkler head bursts and the water comes spraying out under high pressure. The only thing is, spraying water in hot oil makes it more dangerous. It splashes the (burning) oil everywhere and thus instead of extinguishing the fire it makes it worse. Thus no sprinklers in the ships galleys, at least not near cooking equipment. The S-class and R class, equipped with sprinkler systems, follow that rule.

The HI-fog is mist coming out under very high pressure with very small droplets, giving a much greater cooling effect.

Now for a cook who transfers from those ships to a Vista or Signature Class ship suddenly comes across a sprinkler head above his deep-fat fryer in the kitchen. And now he/she is totally confused as it has been drilled into him/her we do not want water being splashed into hot oil. That is where the constant training comes in to familiarize with the new ship. It is not a sprinkler head but a HI-Fog nozzle. It works the same as a sprinkler but instead of solid water coming out it emits a very fine water mist. So fine that it cools the area, brings a fire temperature down but does not rain/splashes into the oil basin of the deep fat fryer. It either dissipates on the heat but mostly it takes the heat away so quickly that by the time it reaches the source of the fire, the fire is out.

This morning we had a few very puzzled faces again but finally they all got the message and were quite happy as it meant there was now another system that could protect their station in case of a fire.

Tomorrow will be another nice and warm day at sea and then we will have the final shopping opportunity in the Bahamas. I think that most guests will be packing tomorrow as the day after Nassau is the end of the cruise.

Since our cruise began we have gone from GMT + 1hrs, to today’s GMT -4 hrs. as last night we had another hour back on the clock.  Giving time changes is something which is done in conjunction with the on board activities. If we sail between two countries then we have to do it during the night in between but on a crossing it does not matter as long as we arrive on the correct time at our next port of call.

As I mentioned in a previous blog we gave an hour back during the night of the Filipino crew show. The crew could do their show and did not lose any sleep over it. A strange result of this time change manipulation is the resulting times of sunrise and sunset. Tonight the sun will be setting just after 5 pm which is a bit early for where we are sailing. If the time changes would have been given in a different way then that same sun could also have set on the ship around 7 pm. It is amazing what power a ship’s captain has: being able to let the sun set whenever he wants it to.

There are many variations in giving time changes. Some companies such as Carnival and RCI do not give time changes at all during their Caribbean Cruises. They simply stay on Miami time and it works well. It saves giving that dreaded hour forward which really empties the ship out. Holland America’s tradition is to do time changes, also on these 7 day or 14 day cruises. (NCL does the same) Why I really do not know, it is a sort of tradition I suppose. I tried it once, not giving any time changes at all, while on the Veendam when we were doing 7 and 14 day cruises from Tampa and it did not make any difference to the guests. Nobody came back late on board and nobody got confused by a church tower clock while ashore.  In a way it was even easier because when they mingled with guests from those other companies, they were at least all on the same time.  Both in the bar ashore as well as coming back to the ship.

Here on board we go the hours back and forward at 2 am. in the morning. Again in between ports you have not much choice to do any other time. On crossings I personally prefer to do it at lunch time or 1 pm. During the Voice from the Bridge I would just announce, we going 30 minutes forward or 30 minutes back if it was a crossing or a cruise with several sea days. Again it worked well. The guests did not forget their clocks as it was announced over the P.A system. They did not go to bed earlier as there was no hour forward.  One of the Hotel Directors who I worked with had made a whole study about it; to see what revenue wise was the best solution.  Night time or day time. His findings (although the sampling was not over that many voyages) for revenue turned out better to go an hour back during the night and to go 30 minutes forward during the day, depending what sort of time change was needed.  But as our guests are in general not party animals, the effect on the On Board Revenue did not result in breathtaking increases.

The crew liked the 30 minutes forward better at lunch time than the hour forward at night, as now they did not lose any sleep but only 30 minutes of break time in the afternoon.  But with so many people, and so many views I do not think there is a perfect time change. We just have to do it to remain in sync with the world.

We still have one hour to go to get the ship on USA and Bahamas time and that hour will be given during the night from 6 to 7 November, which is a Formal night and that helps the guests to decide to stay out a little bit longer as they have dressed up for the occasion anyway. There is also the Captain’s Gold Ball and thus he and the officers will not lose any sleep because of this party either.

Today we had a sunny day again and we nearing tropical temperatures. Noon time reached 26oC or 79oF and I saw the first guest coming by who had definitely spent a little too much time in the sun. A lot of guests forget that sitting on the deck of a cruise ship gives you a double whammy as there is not only the direct sun coming at you but also the sunlight reflected from the water and from the white ships superstructure. Wise people have told me, if you normally would do 20 minutes in the sun for the first day, when on a ship cut it down to 15 minutes or better even less and use a sun block of at least 35 or over.  I have solved the issue by not going in the sun at all anymore. Let’s say I learned my lesson in the old days by not listening to the wise lessons of others.

Tomorrow we are looking forward to a similar day as today and during the coming night we will be passing south of Bermuda but we will be too far south to see it.

The sun came through this morning but it also brought some headwind. So much that we had a gale blowing today. But it was a new gale, a wind just developing under the influence of a low pressure system somewhere to the south west. And new winds have not had the time yet to create swell and thus we had a nice ride today.  We are now about 1100 miles from Horta and that is almost halfway to Nassau.  We are sailing a Great Circle route which is the shortest distance on a curved surface.

The world is a globe and that means that if you could folded the surface flat and draw a shortest distance between two points and then put it back the way it was it would turn into a curved line. That is what we call a Great Circle Line or course. The opposite goes for the Rhumb Line which is a straight line but when it follows its track along the curvature of the earth, it is longer. I am not going into further detail as a quick google will give much better explanation than I can give. 

The two important things to remember are the curved line goes higher up then the Rhumb line and could thus potentially come closer to bad weather.

If the weather all around is the same then it is interesting to use the Great Circle as it is shorter and thus saves fuel. It can make a difference of up to 150 miles on a complete ocean crossing and that gives a significant saving in fuel consumption.  We are using about 0.3 tons of fuel to cover a mile, times 150 miles, times 600 dollars a ton =  $ 27,000 in the pocket.  We are not the only ones who do this. Airplanes do the same. Every time you travel Intercontinental you hear the pilot explaining that they are going over the North Pole or close to it and that means they are following a Great Circle route.

My own navigation landed me today in the Pinnacle Grill. Not for dinner but for training. The ship’s officers do a lot of “First Response” training with the crew, so the crew knows what basic steps to take in case of a fire; until the Fire teams arrive. Very often these basic steps ensure that a fire gets extinguished on the spot or remains very small and under control. When I am on board I like to help out here as A: it is always nice for the crew to see a new face and B: I have more time to spend on this than the average deck officer and that gives the possibility to give a more extensive training’s. Plus it makes the crew feel important that they are being trained by a captain. Word goes around on A, B and C deck, and sometimes I am admonished by certain groups why I have spent time with “the others” and not with them.

This training brought me in the kitchen while Room Service Breakfast was still going on, e.g. being delivered. We have a special group of stewards mainly assigned to this job as their work hours are out of kilter with the rest of their colleagues. Breakfast starts before the Lido or the Dining room opens and regular room service is there for 24 hours a day.

Breakfast assembly line. the 09.00 time slot. A lot of guests must have been sleeping in. Please notice that Holland America touch of a little flower on the tray.

The whole happening is quite a puzzle which is carried out as a sort of assembly line. It starts with collecting all the breakfast cards hanging outside the cabin doors. So after midnight stewards roam through the ship collecting all these cards. And that roaming does not stop when the deadline of putting them out has passed. There will be a final pick up, to ensure that those who forgot, those who are still on another time zone, or those who changed their minds (or added a 2^nd order) will not be left out.

Then during the early hours the first run of tray’s are lined up and everything not cold, nor chilled, hot or perishable is put on the tray. When the first run goes out the next line of trays appear, etc. etc. etc.   until all breakfast time slots have been completed. Once done, the rounds start to collect the trays again. Some have been removed already by the Cabin Stewards but some still have to be collected by the Breakfast team.Tomorrow will be another day at sea. We have already outrun the wind of this morning and tomorrow should be another nice and quiet day.

Today we had rain, courtesy of the tail of a weather system north of us which is moving to the East.  It also brought wind and resulted in a bit of a miserable day; but as there was no swell involved the ship was nice and steady so the guests could enjoy the day fully. The temperature is slowly rising as well and out of the wind we almost had a tropical feeling for a while. We are sailing away from weather system by going West and the system is moving away from us by going east and tomorrow it should look a lot better.

The ship is gearing up for arrival Fort Lauderdale. Gearing up early because it is going to be a very busy day. With 6 days to go everybody is already on full alert. As the ship has been away from the USA for the whole summer it means that we are going to be inspected by the USCG. Since a very long time they carry out a Control Verification program to ensure that the ships calling at the USA are safe. The countries in Europe are doing this as well but there is no coordination or joint agreement between the old world and the new and thus we will have our USCG inspection. Even while we had inspections on the other side of the pond as well. There is a yearly one which is quite elaborate and then after six months there is a follow up inspection which is apart from the full safety drill a walk through the ship. That one lasts normally about 4 to 5 hours, the full – yearly – inspection lasts the whole day. And we get the full one.

Then there might also be a USPH inspection, which takes place twice a year and for that one we also have been away for more than six months. They come on board to ensure that we are all still washing our hands and following all the protocols they have established to ensure a healthy ship and healthy guests and crew. USPH tries to schedule themselves in such a way that they do not conflict with the USCG so they might come next cruise. The USCG cannot wait another cruise; they have to do their inspection during our first call as our USCG certificate has expired as we have been away.  If they both come, then it will take a lot of coordination from the ships staff to get it all properly done and still sail on time.

But that is not all of it as far as inspections goes. We will also get Customs and Border Protection with all guns blazing. We are coming from foreign and that means that all the guests have to go through a face to face inspection. But again as we have been away from USA for longer than three months all the crew has to go through a full 90 days inspection.  So all 800 crew have to march past the CBP officers and have their ID 95 issued which allows them to go ashore. The crew office is currently making all those little white papers which are then verified against the Passport and crew Visa and stamped off. 90 days later is then the next inspection. I will not be part of that as due to the quirks of the immigration system I need another visa, an L visa, (which allows me to travel between ships over US soil) and for that purpose I am considered a passenger who is entering the States and thus I have to show my face as soon as all the guests have been seen. I belong to the category of the non-revenue-passenger in CBP speak.

With all of this going on, we also still have to disembark all the old guests, embark the new guests, load fuel, load water, load all the provisions, give ashore all the recyclables, do a large crew change, have repair and maintenance people coming on board and have a lot of visitors and other important people coming as well. Thus it is going to be a busy, busy day. Captain Turner and his crew will have their work cut out for them. Frustrating for me is, that I cannot be of much help here as I have to get off the ship to enable the required “zero” count so the CBP knows that indeed everybody is off the ship. Even in-transit guests have to leave the ship, wait for the zero count and then they can come back again.

To get it all organized the Front Office is sending out letters to ensure that all the guests know what to do. Most of them travel on an ESTA – or Visa Waiver but they have to make certain that their Esta is up-to-date. Thus the Front Office is sending out reminders.

Tomorrow is our next day at sea and if I interpret the weather chart correctly, we should get some sunshine.

If the coming 6 days are going to be like this, then we are in for a treat. It was not particularly sunny today but it was not windy either and the waves were nice and low; everybody could have a happy time if they wanted to. We are trundling along with a speed of 16.5 knots or so and that will bring us on 08 November in the morning at Nassau. 

The lighter the color the better it is is; but any kind of blue is good. (Courtesy www.Surf-forecast.com)

We are doing only 16.5 knots while our top speed is 20 knots as the company has gradually been bringing down the average speed the ships had to maintain. Not too long ago the cruises where being set up in such a way that we had to run full out all the time to maintain the schedule. With the enormous increase in oil prices from a few years ago, when the price of a ton of ships fuel more than doubled, we started to reduce the average speeds. Fuel became so expensive that you could not just pass the increase on each time anymore to the guests. The second reason was if there was one hiccup during a high speed run then it meant at once a too late arrival or a port cancellation. Not good for guest satisfaction either. The third reason was and is, is that all the shipping companies are working hard to reduce emissions. Part of that is dictated by environmental legislation by countries surrounding a certain sailing area but also by the ethical standards.

Thus the days of racing across at 19 to 20 knots are over. If now we had a bit of wobbly weather in the coming days, we would still be able to make up the time as soon as the waves died down again and we would still be able to call at Nassau in the Bahamas on November 8^th.  Altogether a much better situation.

The ethical point of view is something which has gradually come in into Corporate America in the last 10 years. The Enron scandal was a wakeup call not only business wise but also morally. The Sarban –Oxley act was adopted and apart from being compulsory to live by it also gave a nudge towards a non-required but more of an emotive approach.

Holland America has developed very strong standards in this regards, with an eye on bribery, receiving gifts, how to deal with personnel, and how to simply conduct business and operate ships in a more responsible way. A real challenge here is the fact of: –what is ethical-. As this varies strongly from culture to culture. What is ethical in one country might not be so in another. Cruise ships sail with sometimes 50 to 60 different nationalities on board and this normally means at least 15 different cultures and certainly more than 1 religion. (Thus far I have counted Christianity, Islam, Hindu, Anism, and followers of Confucius on board.)

The one big advantage we have over the shore side and which makes it all a lot easier is that we are first of all beholden not to our background but to the company’s product. And as we live on board there is no option to retreat after the working day back into the home culture. So, for at least half the year we live 24 hours a day by one norm and that is the company norm, and that makes it a lot easier.  Whatever standards an individual crew member wants to apply to his or her way of living, the company standards of safely operating and providing service to our guests come first. If an individual cannot deal with such a thing, then there is no room for this person on board. But if you are willing to accept this basic rule then at the same time the company will go out of its way to ensure that you can live as closely as possible to your private preferences. I do not think that there are many mainstream company’s out there that have a mosque on board, support a regular Christian fellowship society, and make room for Hindu and any other belief which needs a certain way to express itself in a more open and formulized way. It is ethical to respect an individual’s morals and principles but it is even more ethical when all those individuals respect each other’s standards and morals, even if they much different from their own. In all my 35 years with Holland America I have never seen any issues in this regards on board our ships.

To help to deliver this message, we train the crew in our ethical standards and for that purpose the ship’s Human Resources Manager screens video’s, holds meetings and is available for any support a person might need.  And if the crew is happy in their routines, then it directly brushes off onto the guests as well. That is where our smiles are coming from.

We approached Horta in the very early morning and dropped the anchor outside the harbor, as close as safely possible to create the shortest tender distance. The port installed fairly recently a new pier which can handle ships up to 800 feet without much of an issue. Anything over is “at the Captains discretion” as they call it. The ship would fit in but the Zuiderdam with 962 feet would have too tight a space to play around in. So it was the better option to anchor and run a tender service.  The swell was very low and thus a regular tender service could be safely conducted.

To my amazement the Cruise Director had to make several announcements to get everybody going. I had expected that our guests would have been piling into the show lounge as soon as possible to get a tender ticket to go ashore, as today was only a short stop but this was not the case. Maybe they had been there already, maybe because it was Sunday and everybody was in church, maybe because they thought it would be the same as Ponta Delgada; I do not know but nobody was in a hurry it seemed.

My job this morning was to train a group of Dining room and Lido stewards in how to handle grumpy and un-willing guests during an emergency. ………….. And during the Passenger Safety Briefing before the cruise starts as well.  As part of our system of getting everybody as quickly as possible to the muster stations when the alarms go, we have groups of crew members whose task it is to find any stragglers, nay-sayers or those who got a last minute accident to their cabin or the lifeboat station. These groups are called Sweep Teams. There is one for the crew areas, the Crew Sweep Team and there is one for the Guests, called the Passenger Sweep Team.

They have a system whereby 2 groups of four walk  passenger decks. One group of four on the portside and one group of four on the starboard side. They cross each other at the bow end of the ship and then walk back again. Each group has a deck plan for verification and they check each space, each open locker and each rest room to ensure that everybody is indeed following the Captain’s orders.  If somebody is found, he/she is politely but firmly ordered to get going and to do as he/she has been told. I do not know how easy this will be in a real emergency as we can only train for that and hope it will never happen but during the Passenger Safety Briefing before the cruise starts it can be difficult.

Almost everybody will “march” to the lifeboat stations as ordered, but…………….there are always a few. Some of them are multiple cruisers who are getting fed up with the same routine every cruise and think they are exempt after so… many 100’s of days of sailing with HAL and then there are some who do not speak any English and try to use that to their advantage during drill time. (Somehow they always seem to be able to read and order from the menu………….) As they all know that they will be kicked out of their cabins by the cabin stewards, they try to hide in the public rooms. And there they come across the Sweep Team.

And the “sweepers” were telling me this morning, they sometimes had to try to get them out of the lounges and even out of the Rest Rooms. Some went as soon as they were directed; but some were sometimes obnoxious and rude and refused to go.  Not easy to handle for a Steward who has been trained to be forever polite and friendly. Thus this morning we went through the tricks of the trade and how to handle these guests.  As we do a bit of acting it out and as it is US against THEM, there is always a good laugh when everybody relates their experiences and how they got this particular guest to the lifeboat station while the person was remonstrating all the way. There is more to a Dining room steward than just serving food. These guys have a very important job in an emergency as we want to ensure that nobody will be left behind.

We left Horta in the early afternoon and now we will be at sea until 08 November. Then we have a call at Nassau in the Bahama’s and the next day the cruise finishes in Fort Lauderdale. The weather looks good for the coming days, it looks like that this wave front to the North which I mentioned yesterday will indeed not reach our course line and thus we are looking forward to a nice Ocean Crossing.