Well a pinch of salt was not enough to apply to the local weather forecast. More a bag of salt. It was blowing 25 knots full on the beam by the time we entered the fairway instead of nearly wind still as was predicted. The channel into Santo Tomas is not very wide, approx. 300 feet in the deepest area and with the Veendam’s beam of 105 ft. it does not leave much room to drift. Luckily the channel is so shallow that the water can only flow with difficulty under the bottom of the ship and thus the drifting is much less than would be the case if the ship had been in deep water. This was a day to count little blessings. The pilot who normally likes to con the ship “steady on 188o” all the way, was now more interested in the coffee machine and left it all to me. Something I prefer anyway.

The tricky part of Santo Tomas arrival, with wind, is when you have to slow down in the turning basin to line up. The wind changes from full on the beam to various directions by gusting around the mountain located to the West of the port. Only when you are almost at the dock, there is shelter from that same mountain. That means while you are slowing down, you have to change course for a good line up and at the same time get the bow into the wind to avoid setting the whole ship onto ships already docked alongside. It looks a bit like skidding on ice without a brake. It worked out quite nicely in the end, I did not scare the tugboat captains alongside the dock and I kept just sufficient distance to be able to execute a plan B, in case the wind did something weird at the last moment. For once Murphy was asleep and 10 minutes later we were safely docked. For me time to start worrying about departure and about that cold front that is coming down from the Gulf.

It was snowing in New Orleans today, Tampa had 55 knots of wind in suburbia and the weather charts gave a 14 feet wave field in the eastern part of the Gulf, right where our course line goes. If the waves go over 12 feet, the Veendam starts pitching heavily and that means I am loosing speed. Thus I have to put more power on the engines and that creates an un-comfortable ride and extra fuel consumption. At the moment it looks like it that the cold front will lay over the Yucatan by noon time tomorrow. If that is going to happen then we might not see Costa Maya at all. If it is late, we are going to have some “happy times” in the Gulf of Mexico. If it is early then we might be in luck with a good but breezy day in Costa Maya and diminishing swells in the Gulf.

The Veendam during an early morning arrival in Santo Tomas on a normal, windless day.

Departure was indeed a breezy affair and needed some extra focus on getting the ship into the channel. With 25 knots on the beam and only 4 knots of speed while coming out of the turning basin, it was a bit unnerving to get the ship lined up properly. Especially when the wind got hold of that big funnel that the Veendam has. So with the wind trying to push the ship out of the channel and me maneuvering against it, the Veendam wobbled around a little bit until I could come onto a steady course and sailed her out towards safer waters, namely open sea.

Tomorrow we will arrive around 0700 at Costa Maya pilot station and then we will see if the cold front has done us a favor or not.