04 April 2016; Venice, Italy.

Right after arrival yesterday, the first guests boarded and a steady trickle continued until noon time today. Then at 13.00 hrs. it was time for the Guest Safety Briefing inaugurating our new system of indoor mustering. As I am living in a Guest Cabin, I followed the flow from my Cabin to find my Muster location. It is quite simple:  your cabin is assigned to an area and that area is split up in several sections.  In my case area D2 and section M. Both letters are indicated on the cabin key and on the safety notice on the back of the cabin door. 

As our public rooms run over two decks; Deck 2 Plaza Deck and Deck 3 Promenade Deck, the muster stations are also on both decks.  If you have to go to D3 you will find it on Deck 3 and if you have to go to D2 you will find it on Deck 2. The sections on each deck have different letters; A is in the World Stage and E in the dining room. As this a shakedown cruise, we are not sailing full and thus there was ample space and time to do a good check and see if everything worked. We even had one section C3 in the upper Queens Lounge do the crocodile line to the boat station and line up there.  In a real emergency, there would be no line up; everybody would walk directly into the boat.

When you leave your cabin, there are crew members in the corridors, in the staircases and at the entrance to the Muster Area, as here in the World Stage.

Guests are being scanned when they arrive at their muster station. Here they wait and they are rescanned again when they step into the lifeboat. For this purpose we have two crew members per life boat who have PDA’s and simply scan the bar code on your cabin key/ID card. The information scanned in, goes directly to Muster Control (Front Office) and they can see on a screen how quickly each Muster location is filling. They can also see which cabins are not showing up and then Evacuation Teams are being sent to check the outstanding Guest Cabins. Other Evacuation Teams sweep the public rooms to ensure no guests are left behind there either.  While you go to your Muster station there are plenty of crew around to show you the way, both in the staircases and in the Mustering Area. A lot more than I have seen with other companies who follow the same system. If you would have to go into the lifeboat, the Commander is coming to your location to collect you and guide you to his/her boat.

The ss Ryndam of 1951. She later became the cruise ship Atlas and ended her days as the casino ship Copa Casino.

Yesterday I posted the Maritime Paintings of Stephen Card. In the Captains corner there is one more nautical artifact, a very nice and detailed model of the ss Ryndam of 1951. Together with its sister ship the Maasdam (III) it caused a revolution in the shipping world as they were the first ships where the best location for everything was handed over to Tourist Class while the First Class only had a small area around the bridge. Quite shocking but it made sense as you can make more money from Tourist Class per square foot than from First Class.  These hugely popular ships which went on to cruising and survived long after the Trans-Atlantic sailings had been terminated.

Shore Excursions on Deck 1, Main Deck, in the centre staircase. Nice and spacious with multiple desk-stations for handling guests.

On this shakedown cruise we are doing only one port, Dubrovnik which is a late morning and afternoon call. From there it is straight to Civitavecchia/Rome where we will arrive in the late afternoon of the 7^th. Once there we will disembark all the Contractors and Service people we still have on board to ensure that by the next morning we are completely ready for our regular changeover of guests. This does not mean we are not running this cruise as a real cruise. Contrary we have to check if everything works and thus Shore Excursion is running tours both in Dubrovnik and in Civitavecchia. The Shore excursion office on the Koningsdam is really the best we have in the fleet, with ample space and back offices on either side for the Staff.  As mentioned in a previous blog the desks could also be used for check ‘ins on board and for other purposes.

Today we sail at 14.00 hrs. a nice prime time for a scenic sail away from Venice. It is over cast and a bit greyish but that should be an advantage for taking photos as the sun is not in the way and there will be no glare. It will take about an hour to get to open sea and then for the remainder of the day and night we sail south east towards Dubrovnik. It will be the first real work out for the Main Engines and the engineers are quite excited to find out how much speed they will give under normal operating conditions.

I call this the Broken Spilled Milk Jug.

I am ending again with a piece of art. On deck 1 in Forward and Aft Guest staircases there are corner displays in the same way as on the Vista and Signature ships. On those ships they have antiques, here we have art. The 4 display cases have been given over to an artist who specializes in using broken crockery to create something new.  I have to remember this, next time I am home and I break something I can just glue it back together in anyway I want and then it is worth more than before.

And this the Broken Butterfly Teapot.