02 December 2008, At Sea.

The wind kept blowing from the West, North West and that meant that it was partly with us. Also the waves and swell generated with this wind were ¾ on the sb. beam and could thus be taken care of by the stabilizers. The ship still moved a little bit but it got nearly to zero in the later part of the afternoon when we moved more and more away from the wave field that was generated a few days ago by the cold front. Had we traveled directly to the Panama Canal or to Roatan then we would have been in that wave field all the way. Now we hugged the coast of Mexico on a South Westerly and the wave field moved in a South Easterly directly.

As mentioned yesterday, I will answer some queries that were made in the past few days.

1. Do stabilizers slow us down? Yes they do, roughly about 0.75 miles in the hour. That means that over 10 hours we would have traveled 7.5 miles more if they had been retracted and not in use. Thus to arrive on time the ship has to go faster to make up the difference and that costs more fuel.

2. Where can I get a good photo of the hal funnel logo? Please try this website:
http://www.aadhoogesteger.nl/cruiseschepen/index.html
The photos are of high quality and there should be one, where you can crop out
the logo.

3. Do all ships sell the navigation charts on board? No and yes. Most ships do it on the very long cruises as the guests ask for it. Here on the Veendam we do it nearly every cruise as there are always guests who like to have one but do not always want to ask for it. Also I try to use every opportunity to get more money in the crew fund? So if we have spare; then we go for it.

4. Can guests donate to crew parties and crew activities? No. We try to keep this strictly separate from the guests onboard. There is always the chance that the crew might start asking for contributions, which is of course a big No No, and there is the chance that guests demand the right to be involved because they donated. It is better to keeps things separate.

5. Before the ship had three cruise schedules, now only one, why is that? This had to do with the decision to move the Noordam from the New York winter cruises.
The ship was given East Carib cruises to make from fort Lauderdale and needed the docking slots of the Veendam to make it possible. Thus the Veendam was scheduled to the West Carib only. Next season the Ryndam will take over the Tampa run and do a mixture of West and East Carib cruises. The Veendam is going to South America.

6. Who is the fourth Staff Officer? It is the environmental officer. Holland America considers the environment so important that all Environmental Matters are over seen by a person with Staff Officer status. It is a bit of a peculiar position. The EO has no department but himself; but at the same time all the crew onboard work for him to ensure compliance with the regulations. The ISO 14001 which I discussed in the last two days is very much under the control of the EO.

7. What are Quartermasters and what do they do? QM’s are sailors who have gone through the ranks (Sailor Os, Sailor AB) and have proven that they can work independently. Each watch has two, one to keep a lookout, and one to steer the ship when needed, (such when going in and out of port). In confined waters such as Alaska and under pilotage, we always steer by hand and the QM’s steer for 30 minute periods. In ports they do security watches on the mooring decks and operate the tenders between ship and shore when at anchor. For all of this there is an extensive training program that they have to go through
onboard.

As this was the first sea day, the day ended with the regular captains welcome onboard champagne toast before the show. This time I stood too close to the bottle and got hit by the confetti. We also had a new Employee of the month and I hope that I can upload his details by tomorrow. Tomorrow we are Belize and it looks like a good day but with a very small chance of drizzle. With temperatures of only 80oF, the whole area is still under the influence of the cold weather systems.