04 May 2011; heading towards Madeira.

The Atlantic showed itself from its best side. Sunny and hardly any wind at all. Just a gentle breeze from the North East and thus a following wind, as we were going South West. Madeira is located considerably closer to the equator than Spain and Portugal, although it is part of the latter.  The nearer to the south the ship starts the crossing, the more comfortable I am, as the bad weather is created much further North. It might come more south on occasion but at least it will have by then lost some of its intensity. The only thing that marred a perfect day was the fact that the current was not with us, or on the beam, but for some un-explicable reason against us. That meant that I had to run an extra engine for a few hours to stay on schedule and that was not nice for my fuel budget. It was only late in the evening that the current finally behaved according to what was expected and I could stop that extra engine.  Three engines on sea speed then brought us comfortably us to the Funchal pilot station. 

Although we have 9 days to go, the cruise is now slowing coming to an end. At least as far as the sightseeing is concerned. One more port to go and then 7 sea days. That means that the number of social events for the captain will start to increase dramatically. With port days it is hardly possible for me to do anything outside navigation, as the days start early and normally end late. But on sea days it is a different story. On a 7 day cruise, the social events are limited to the basics that are part of the company formula. With a long cruise the whole picture changes. First of all, all guests are now involved with certain functions, as all are now repeat guests and all are Grand Voyage guests. That means that all guests are invited to one or more parties thrown by the captain, or special officers tables in the diningroom. Lots of those parties take place in my cabin, which being designed for that purpose, will now be used for that on a near continuous basis. Then there are the Mariners receptions. Everybody on a long cruise is automatically a Mariner and as the Prinsendam attracts also a lot of the “high days” mariners that evokes extra functions as well.

The Mariners presence generates this cruise a minimum of four functions. A luncheon for the 700+ day mariners, two Mariner luncheons for the complete guest count in a first and 2^nd sitting and a separate party for the Medal mariners and those who are achieving an upgrade.  Today we had the luncheon for the 700+ day guests. To make it a bit different than normal; we held it in the kitchen.  At home you eat quite often in the kitchen and as the Prinsendam Company is one big family, we thought we might as well do it in the kitchen as well. The Prinsendam, although the smallest ship in the fleet, has the largest kitchen of them all. Located on three levels its total square footage is larger than the kitchen on one of the Vista Class ships, which caters for three times as many people. This is leftover from the Royal Viking days, when there was only one sitting and much more was hand prepped, instead of bought ready-to-cook.

We had; 34 seven hundred day+ medal holders onboard, with several over the 1000 days. For them we set up a longer table in the forward part of the deck 7 kitchen. Here in the wide walkway between the hot serving counter and the dishwashing area, we served an Indonesian Rijstafel. Not the complete routine as that involves 32 or more dishes, but a sampling of the best that the Indonesian Kitchen has to offer.  I normally give a little speech explaining how Indonesian food ends up being served on the Hal Ships, as it is a story that goes much further back than the arrival of the Indonesians onboard our ships back in 1971. Having been one country for over 400 years, the connection with the Dutch East Indies has left the Dutch with a big preference for Indonesian food. I think that there is a hardly a town or hamlet in the Netherlands that does not have its own “Chinees-Indisch Restaurant”. My logic is most of the time, if there is a church, then there is also somewhere such a restaurant. Hence Indonesian food has always been served onboard our ships and now with Indonesian crew we can basically get it every day if you want to.  

That took care of my lunch today and then in the evening I had another party in my cabin from 7 to 8.30 pm to top things off. That cycle will now continue for the remainder of the cruise until we come to Fort Lauderdale. To make sure that we can go home that day, my wife has decreed that tomorrow is trunk “packing day” while we are docked in Funchal, Madeira.

It looks that it is going to be a gorgeous day tomorrow. Also the coming sea days look very good, with a large high pressure system laying over the area and the nearby low pressure systems not being very strong.  The weather is looking so good, that I have asked the office to allow me to extend our time in port from 1400 hrs to 1700 hrs to give the guests a full day. I had to take Motril away from them because of the weather, so now at least I can give them something back in Funchal also because of the weather.