12 April 2013: Fort Lauderdale, USA.

We came charging down the Straits for Florida with 3 knots of Gulf Stream current in the back and high hopes to make a speedy arrival in Fort Lauderdale, and then found the Maasdam in our way. They are on a 10 day loop cruise to the South East Caribbean and have as a last port of call Half Moon Cay. From there they have a tight schedule to get to Fort Lauderdale so it all depends on how fast they can get the guests back on board. If it is a nice day in HMC then the ship will always leave late as all the guests aim on coming back on the last tender. Although it is not very customer friendly, we as captains, always hope for a rain shower about an hour before departure as it helps with a more regular flow back towards the tender dock. I think the Maasdam also suffered from lack of rain in HMC and thus they were later than scheduled at the pilot station. Then there was some muddle with the pilot scheduling and all in all I did not get in as fast as I had hoped for. Still we made it safely to the dock and docked next to the Maasdam. So indeed we could look at ourselves as the Maasdam is still a virtual carbon copy of the Statendam. We were the two only cruise ships in port and occupied berth 20 and 19.

A busy day in Port Everglades with 10 passenger ships in port. Today it was much more quiet and we occupied berth 19 where you can see the Carnival ship in the Photo.

Berth 19 is geared up to receive the mega liners and has two sky – walks to connect to the ship to get 3000 or 4000 people off in a very fast pace. Now with our 1200 on board we only hooked in one sky-walk as that is more than enough to keep a regular flow going towards the CBP inspection.

A loooooong line of trucks waiting to be unloaded, today we loaded about 250 pallets of stores and provisions for the coming cruise.

The unpleasant thing about this dock today was that it was perpendicular on the wind, which blew with a wind force six right onto the sb side of the ship. Luckily the terminal is quite large and the provisioning operation was sheltered by it. Otherwise we would have had packaging and other materials flying all over the place.

Another worrying thing is to have two identical ships in port; with similar names (at least for the un-initiated) and in close proximity. Then there is the danger that things get mixed up, and that happened today a few times as well. Luggage left at the airport ended up at the Maasdam and vice versa, crewmembers were dropped off at the wrong ship, a wheelchair delivery went the wrong way, etc etc. So all day long it was a to-ing and fro-ing of people relocating items between the ships. Our checking procedures are good enough to filter all these wrongly directed items out before they are coming on board but it is all extra work.

Then there are guests who get themselves in a muddle. Mainly those who are independants, e.g. book everything outside Holland America. If they have own flights, we do not know when they arrive and thus they can fall out of the safety net of the HAL Reps at the airport. Some of them are not even quite aware on which “Holland” ship they are going on and can then end up at the wrong terminal and have to be re-directed again. The situation can get worse with those who come by thier own transport and park at the wrong terminal. The spouse is then often sent ahead as an advance party to the ship, while the other half parks the car……and then gets lost. That was what happened today as well. Luckily early enough in the afternoon, so it did not impede the departure of the ship, but it did send shore operations into a scramble to try to find the person. In the end it was found that the person had decided to walk from the parking garage back to the ship. Unfortunately the walking pace of the individual was not exactly in synch with the time needed to cover the distance and arrive at the ship in time. But it was all taken care of.
So right on time we pulled out, following the Maasdam, who is in an even greater hurry than we were, as they have to make it to San Juan on time, with a quite boisterous North Atlantic awaiting them. With a lot of wind on beam, I employed the “blow away maneuver” to get off the dock and then built up as much speed as quickly as possible so that the pilot only had as little drift to contend with as possible.
Tonight we will have to buck the Gulfstream to get back south again. I will try to stay away as far from the Axis as possible by hugging the Bahama Bank side and then tomorrow we will sail above Cuba. There the weather looks good, but the mid and south Caribbean are still extremely windy.