07 August, 2009 Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

One of the things I like about an overnight stay is that you see a city slowly coming alive in the morning. With traffic bustling through the port that you normally do not see, because their work is in the early morning, and slowly that whole machinery that makes a metropolis tick comes to life. The beautiful weather of yesterday continued through the day, with very little wind, and that meant that a lot of small pleasure craft where out and about during the day. It is August so many people in Holland have vacation and with water all around, whole family’s potter around in all sorts of boats. Some of these boats beggar belief. One, that they stay afloat and Two that people are daring to sail around with them. The port of Amsterdam is not tidal so there is no current and it is also quite sheltered which means that the wind can not whip up the waves to great heights. That results in some floating constructions to defy the laws of stability in top heaviness. However when they come to have a look at the Prinsendam, they have to come out of the shelter of the canals and onto the IJ; the large fairway along which we are docked. Here is a lot of commercial traffic coming by. Including large inland barges which draw a considerable wake and these self assembled “sea castles” rock, list surge and wallow in the wake of these barges and quite often nearly tip over. Not something for a professional sailor to look at too long.

From the bridge wing I could see just my old Maritime Academy when I sailed into the port yesterday. Until it was closed down a few years ago, it was the oldest Maritime academy in the world founded in 1786, and for over 200 years the Institute dominated the Dutch seafaring training. There were more Maritime Schools in the Netherlands and two of those, Vlissingen and Terschelling, still exist but Amsterdam was always something special. Maybe it was because of the way it was founded and operated. Around 1780 a fund was established by some rich merchants in Amsterdam to further the cause of young people going to sea. That fund with its governors always controlled the school until the very end. It always remained a private Institute. When I attended the school between 1976 and 1979 it had merged to a certain extent with another Amsterdam Maritime school, located almost next door. This school provided the lessons and we lived at the old school. Your first year was in dormitories and then for your second and third year you were assigned to smaller rooms. Later on the whole place was rebuilt and it all became apartment style.

However this merger did not see the school survive in the end. In Holland the schooling system was rearranged and different disciplines had to be brought together in one Poly Tech University system. Thus different forms of education came together under one umbrella. The Maritime Academy became part of the Amsterdam Poly Tech. This meant that these students’ apartments now had to be available to all other branches as well. But there was the uniform. To be in my school, to be a “Kwekeling” as they were called you had to wear the school uniform. That did not work of course at all for the other parts of the combined setup and in the end it was decided to end a long and rich Maritime Tradition. The fund still exists and its governors still invest money in causes that will benefit the future of shipping and its traditions. For us only the “Old Boys” reunions still remain. These are quite well attended and with it the traditional dinner. This goes by table settings, based on the year that you entered the school. That is basically the year that you start to exist as far as the shipping world was concerned. I am from entry year 1976 but the oldest at the reunion was from the year of entry 1936. (Deduct at least 18 years from that and you get an idea of how old that person was)

During the cruise which finished yesterday, I had also two “Oud Kwekelingen” onboard. When they came through the receiving line (*) on formal night, that was of course the first thing that they mentioned. We are from the same school, so we have something special in common, we are “Kwekelingen”. It is a distinction that remains with you for the rest of your life.

We sailed right on time, and we are going for our second Baltic cruise. Quite unusual for the Prinsendam to do two of the same cruises in a season, but we have added the extra port of Vaasa in Finland. Tomorrow we are in the Kieler Kanal. That will be my longest day of the cruise again. It starts at 0600 in the morning and ends at 01.30 the next day. But the scenery will be nice as the weather forecast predicts a rain and wind free day.

(*) With the captains welcome onboard champagne toast there is no official receiving line anymore but as I have to be around anyway, we do greet the guests at the entrance. We are a smaller ship and do longer cruises, so a small meet and greet makes sense for our sort of operation.