01 November 2018; Nieuw Statendam building, 29 Days to go.

Today it is a national holiday in Italy; All Saints and thus only the non-yard people are working as these sub-contractors normally have different working arrangements. We are also working as usual as All Saints is not a National Holiday in the Netherlands. Then there is the blur of when we really work. The core HAL group at the yard has been working Monday’s to Friday’s with the weekend off. The additional persons who are now coming in, which includes me, are already on a ships contract and thus work 7 days a week in the same way as we do on board. That makes it all a bit vague but as we have only 10 days to go before we go on board the issue will soon be null and void as we then go full time to the ships routine based on 24/7 watch routines. The engineers have already started their watch keeping activities as the yard has one engine running and more and more systems are coming live and are being delivered as completed. And while a yard engineer is still pushing the buttons it does not do any harm to have a HAL engineer looking over his/her shoulder to observe and learn.

A peek in the engine room. This is the sewage treatment area and as you can see all the equipment is in place. It just needs a bit of cleaning up and giving the floor plates a final coating.

As I blogged about before, the Pinnacle Class with the Koningsdam, The Nieuw Statendam and later also the X-dam, have been designed with the STRP philosophy in mind. Safe Return To Port. The idea of the IMO (International Maritime Organization), the SOLAS regulator, is that the ship becomes its own lifeboat if something major goes wrong. If that really works can be argued about, but any improvement made to a ship will always help if there is a major calamity.  With the STRP the ship is to a certain extent redesigned and if there would be an engine room fire, the other engine room would not be affected. If the main navigation bridge would be out of order, then the backup navigation bridge could be used. To test the STRP, the shipyard has to simulate an emergency, basically by creating a black out in one engine room to see if the surviving systems will work. With the ship nearing completion you cannot simply stop everything at any given time and thus these tests are being done at night, when there is hardly anybody on board. Some of these tests were done this week and thus far everything works as the manual told it should and thus the Chief Engineer was a happy camper.

The 2nd (emergency Bridge) of the Nieuw Statendam. All the basic equipment is there but it is completely enclosed against calamities such as fire or anything else.

Because the bridge does not have any windows and thus the Captain has to go back to the old ways of sailing, standing in the open air and relay his orders to a navigator inside behind the controls. The good old days with men of steel bracing the elements on an open bridge might yet come back.

Back to the good old days. This is the Rotterdam (II) from 1881 and the captain and officers on the bridge are fully exposed to the elements at all times.

What is becoming more and more apparent is the fact that none of the art has arrived yet. During the fitting out of the Koningsdam it all appeared while work was still going on everywhere but as now most of the major work has been completed blank patches on the walls can be seen everywhere. Same for the art in the staircase lobbies, the pedestals are there and we are awaiting the art.

The back wall of the Lido behind the service stations. Here the art is a sort of wall paper photo material which will eventually appear when the art guru’s arrive at the yard.

In the meantime the crew keeps bringing supplies on board and today the focus was on Restaurant supplies from the store rooms on board to the Guest Cabins and Housekeeping supplies (linen and towels) from the ware house and containers onboard and into the store rooms. As there was very little yard activities today it was a great day to do it and the crew was racing to and fro with trolleys without being hindered by Yard work. How do we get it all on board? Either by crane or by fork lift. On regular intervals there are balconies installed on the side of the ship. They are not welded to the ship but hooked on where ever there is an option to do so. These “balconies” are used by the cranes to deposit small containers or boxes on. It eliminates the need for difficult maneuverings into or over the ship and the crew on the inside can simply roll off the items delivered or manually lift them off and into the ship.

Several of the contraptions hanging outside the ship for making it easier to get materials in and out of the ship.

The weather remains a mixed bag of happenings. The rain came early today and not as much as expected but instead of drying away it will keep drizzling until Saturday. Luckily there are no strong winds expected and that will be good news for the residents of Venice.