11 October 2011; At Sea.

The great thing of this cruise is the number of sea days that form part of it. We have one or two ports and then we have a sea day again; and now in this case there are two sea days in a row. It makes the whole cruise so much more relaxed. Also a cruise is much more than just visiting port after port. Going to a lot of ports in a cruise is very interesting of course but then your cruise ship becomes a sort of overnight ferry-vehicle that transports you there. All programs and activities that HAL offers on board have to take a step into the background as it is port after port after port. Shipside has on those cruises the problem of getting our “fixed” items in, such as parties and meetings, especially the Mariners parties. For those you need a sea day and if there is only one in the cruise, that is the day it has to be. That day is then crammed with all the other activities, including the disembarkation speech and crew farewell. Most of the time that is the last day of the cruise and then the guests need to pack during that day as well. So there is much to say for having a few sea days in a cruise and on this one we have the luxury of having quite a few and everybody is enjoying them to the fullest.

On sea days my day does not start that early and it commences normally with the first ritual of the day, hitting the delete button on the computer. We have on our networked –ships computers- a rule system, which means that I get automatically copied in on messages sent by others. A great way to stay informed about everything, on the other hand tiresome and I do not need to know everything that is going on. So most items I can delete directly just after reading the headline. That process keeps me “happily” occupied for at least 10 to 20 minutes. Then it is time to have a look on the bridge, to see if we are still going the right way and all is according to plan, while the quartermaster serves my early morning cup of green tea. Next is breakfast and it is during this period that I write my daily blog; the rough version of it. Later on in the day I do a review and then it is uploaded. I have a hotelmanager at the moment who is a very enthusiastic and a very professional photographer so in the course of the day there is normally a nice photo floating by that can go with the blog. My own roving reporter Lesley is at home, so this period no photos from her shore side explorations. As my mother in law is 90 and still going very strong, she has decided to take her out on as many vacations and short breaks as possible while the going is good.

Next thing on the Agenda was the ships fire drill. Apart from being compulsory involved, I always take a great interest in these drills as it can happen that the drills become “just the weekly routine” and I like to get the most out of it. So it is not unusual that I setup a scenario that nobody expects and that really perks up the interests of all involved. After the drill there is always an extended debriefing about lessons learned and omissions observed and those will be incorporated in the next drill. This is a never ending story as crew rotates in and out, new crew joins and functions change. From there I had to run to be on time for the first Mariners party; the one we call the Cling-Clang club where we award the medals. That is followed by the Mariners luncheon and with Holland America having so many repeat guests that can sometimes be the whole ship or nearly the whole ship. With the number of sea days that we have on this cruise, we can spread it out a bit, so we had 500 today and there will be another 400 tomorrow. Tearing away from lunch I had to run to the bridge for the regular Voice from the Bridge.

This was followed by the planning session with the deck officers for our day in Half Moon Cay and this time we were joined by all the engineers, so they also knew what was exactly going to happen. Useful because being inside the Engine Room, you are not always aware of what is exactly going on as you cannot look outside. Then I can normally take a break but today I had volunteered to do my Holland America history lecture as we had a large number of guests on board who had made crossings with HAL in the 60’s and or emigrated with HAL when they were young. That normally results in a packed show lounge, The Showroom at Sea and is always fun to do. The day was concluded with a party in the crow’s nest and another visit to the bridge. We are doing very well there. The swells initially predicted have all gone; we have the wind in the back and thus we are going faster than planned. Tonight we are going through the Windward Passage and then we get even more following current. That means that I can most likely switch of an engine tomorrow morning; save some fuel and still be on time.

Not mentioned in my lecture but still a great, if less wellknown HAL ship: the Dinteldyk. The ship also carried passengers but had a dyk ending as the emphasis was on carrying cargo. She had a grey hull, while the other cargo ships had a black hull. Reason for this was that she was considered the flagship of the west coast fleet. She was employed on a route from Europe through the Panama Canal to the west coast of the USA and Canada.