04 Aug. 2016; Eidfjord, Norway.

Eidfjord is located almost at the end of the EidFjord although there is a little bit more going further inland just around the corner from the town itself. The town & dock is located in a sheltered bend in the high mountain ranges which you can see on either side of the fjord. The mountain ranges are not as steep as when going to Gerainger fjord but still steep enough to lose our satellite connection for internet and telephone all day. If you wonder if it leaves the ship completely without communication, the answer is no, as the captain still has the iridium telephone connection on the bridge, which uses any satellite available. But you do pay $ 10 a minute for it so it is only in use as the Hot Line. And of course your regular cellphone /mobile phone is still working as long as you have Global Roaming.

Strange thing today while sailing in. The wind pushed the smoke towards the mountain and then it bounced back again with the wind.

But for the regular ships operations is was a quiet day as far as email traffic was concerned. We could not talk to Mama Main frame in Seattle and that reduced the number of emails going in and out to zero. With our lives nowadays completely connected (or entangled) with the internet it does upset the routine. You would almost get withdrawal symptoms.  I am somehow convinced that if our crew did not all have cell phones then there would be quite a few of the Generation Y and the millennials who would have had a tuff day to day. I think by 7 pm everybody who is not at work, will be sitting behind the computer trying to get contact with the rest of the world again.

The town of Eidfjord. Not exactly a metropolis as things go.

This does not stop anybody from having a great day in Eidfjord. The rain stayed away, apart from the last hour, for the whole day it just remained overcast. Being sheltered in the fjord means that there was no wind and thus it was very pleasant outside. This stop is really made to go on tour and explore the country side. Hordaland which is the county here is full of ancient stuff from the early days of Scandinavia. Even the little church of Eidfjord is from the 14^th. Century.  The town itself has only 900 inhabitants but it is a tourist “processing point” for approx. 500,000 cruise ship visitors a year. If you come from the land side then it is a long travel with only limited hotel capacity and thus we saw a lot of campervans or R.V’s as the Americans say coming through. Right under the bridge at the dock there was a small camping and at one of those camper vans a German family was having a late breakfast as it was 10 am. the moment we docked. Not a bad way to see Norway.

The dock is very short in length and thus have all the long mooring lines to be even longer and go inland.

We had two pilots this morning, due to the distance, and one of them was a Lady. Although the world of shipping has been open to ladies for a long long time we still do not see Lady Pilots very often. I think most of the time it is a job which is hard to combine with children, as you can join pilotage only after you have your Master License (around your 30^th.) and the cut off joining date is somewhere around the 40^th – 42^nd. birthday and that is prime time for having children. Therefore sailing remained for a long time really a men’s world although there was a Russian Lady Captain already in 1935, Holland America had its first lady officer/cadet in 1968 and since then we have had a regular influx of Ladies. The Rotterdam has currently only one on board, a 3^rd officer from Flemish side of Belgium but sometimes there are two or three. We have now one Lady Officer who is Staff Captain and if things work out, the way we hope it will, she will be the first Lady Captain of Holland America Line.

A blast from the past of Holland America history. The first Lady (cadet) Officer in the company. Esse Rieke Agter. Seen here with with Capt. Ten Kate.

A side effect of the Ladies joining the seafaring community later in history has always been that our systems never took into account if an officer was male or female. You were simply a Navigator. So when the ladies started to join, we never had the issue which you hear about on the shore side that ladies get paid less than men.  Our wage scales are part of a union agreement and just state the remuneration for a rank and that is it. And that is the way it is should be.

We sailed from Eidfjord at 18.00 hrs. We sail under the bridge at the entrance of the Fjord around 23.00 hrs. and expect to be outside by 00.30 hrs. Then we have a day at sea before the ship spends two days in Rotterdam. About 140 guests will leave the ship on the 7^th. but the rest will travel back to Boston on the 2^nd leg of the Voyage of the Vikings. I will leave the ship that day as well but I will take the train to Amsterdam to transfer to the Koningsdam. In the meantime life goes on as emails will start to come again in the evening. Norway with its mountains is simply not constructed for modern day –interconnected- life.

(Eidfjord is a good fjord for blogging. At 1920 to 1940 hrs. there was a low section in the fjord making it possible to upload today’s blog)