14 August 2010; Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Last time I was caught on arrival by a tanker going extremely slow out of the locks, causing me to arrive just too late at the dock. So this time I brought my ETA forward to include some leeway for slow tankers and other issues that might delay a timely arrival. Good thing that I did as once again there was a tanker in the locks and we had to kill about 40 minutes. This time the tanker was not slow it was just that the lock schedule for him was not in synch with our arrival time. Still I had built in sufficient spare time now and we were docked at 0700 hrs. as scheduled. We were docking at the Cruise Terminal and according to the pilot we were the last ship to do so before Sail Amsterdam was starting at the end of the coming week. The Eurodam scheduled for the 19th has been banned to a cargo pier somewhere far away from town as the cruise terminal will be full with square riggers and other sailing ships. We already saw a number of them slowly making their way down the coast under Norway and no doubt we will see more of them tomorrow when we go through the Kieler Kanal.

This time I docked nose in to please the Chief Engineer. The access doors to the ship, we call them break doors, are identical on each side of the ship, except for the engine room bunker breaks. On the port side it is a small door near the stern but on the starboard side it is a larger door more in the centre. Inside this door is a crane and a hatch to inside of the engine room. Especially designed, so that large pieces of engine equipment can be lowered directly into the Engine room spaces, when loaded. This time the chief had to land a large piece of equipment for overhaul and thus I had to dock starboard side alongside to make this possible. It gave the added advantage that a lot of engine stores could now go directly into the ship via this door as well. Thus we had nearly all the doors open on the Starboard side. Deck four for luggage. Deck three (tender break) to avoid it being damaged from dock fenders pressing against it. Deck 6 for the shore sky bridge for human traffic. The engine break for the engineers and the provision break for storing. (In total 275 pallets for deck, engine and Hotel we loaded today) the only door that remained closed was deck 5 as that is the alternating door if deck 6 is too high. Luckily the weather was not too hot, as with all those doors open it is nearly impossible to keep the air-conditioning under control. Still in a change over port that is what the operation calls for.

This was our last call to Holland for this year and thus we did have a lot of visitors onboard. On official business, un-official business, family related and for a myriad of other reasons. It makes a day like this look more like controlled mayhem but it is all part of a cruise ship operation. Still with all that stuff going on, we did leave on time for the Kieler Kanal. Outbound the Ijmuiden lock was open to us and we made it back to open water exactly in the time frame that I had hoped for. Time that I needed; as tomorrow when going up the river Elbe, the current will be against us. The tide will be ebbing and that means that each hour I have to make good an extra 3 knots. That is about 9 miles in total and thus I want to be at the pilot station tomorrow morning half an hour earlier to compensate for that. I expect that that will work out now because we left Amsterdam exactly on time. The written weather forecast looks very ominous, announcing a lot of wind and chances of rain but I cannot verify that myself on the weather charts, I simply do not see the bad weather getting to the Kieler area that quickly; if at all.

So I am cautiously optimistic and hoping for a clear day. Tomorrow is a Sunday and the sides of the canal will be full of people. This makes the sail through even more wonderful than it already is. Of course we also have to see if the groupies (see last transit) with the flags will be there again.