Barbados is a peculiar island to call at, for several reasons. First of all the ships have to make an “extra” effort to get there as it is located outside the eastern rim of Caribbean Islands which form the boundary of the Caribbean Sea. The island is surrounded by North Atlantic Ocean on all sides. So is it really a Caribbean Island??? Secondly they are very independent but still very British. They used to close the shops on Saturday afternoon for the weekly cricket game. That happens less now as the booming Cruise Trade forced a rethink between tradition and style and raking in the dollars. Thirdly it acts as a turn over port for cruise ships, far- far away from Miami and Fort Lauderdale.
Barbados has excellent airport facilities (the Concorde used to fly here) and can handle a larger number of airplanes and passengers at the same time. Thus British company’s such as P&O use Bridgetown as a changeover port. This is also done by smaller company’s / smaller ships which do not want to make cruises where one day or more is lost to get to and from the Caribbean and still stay on the 7 day circuit. Today being Saturday we had several ships in port doing so.
When the good ship Noordam pointed it’s nose into the harbor, it was the last cruise ship in. Docked were the Ventura, the Royal Clipper, the Seabourn Spirit and Windstar. Apart from the Noordam they all used Bridgetown as a changeover port. That cannot be bad for the local economy at all. The port of Bridgetown has a U-shaped main harbor and apart from a Geest Line Banana Boat the whole port was full of cruise ships. Everything else had to stay outside, at anchor, until they all sailed. Understandable that we are not always very popular with the cargo ship captains who have to sit idle, losing money while the cruise ships take preference. But we book two years in advance and always show up on the minute to keep the schedule. Cargo ships cannot do that so what can we say?
Archive photo with all berths full of cruise ships. Going clockwise from top: Berth 2 A,B,C, Sugar Mill berth and Breakwater South and North. The knuckle is the end of the Breakwater.
If a ship does a turnover in Barbados then it is assigned a berth as close as possible to the cruise terminal. That is berth nbr 2. South. Because the Ventura of P&O was doing exactly that, we had to dock at the Breakwater north. Not a bad dock from a Captains point of view but not ideal for the guests as they have to walk around the whole of the harbor. The port runs a shuttle service with small buses but you have to wait and they might be full from another ship already.
Also for the captain this is an interesting location to be at. Coming into the port you have to make a very sharp 90 degree turn to line up with the Breakwater inside the dock. To do this successfully most captains line up the ship completely parallel to the dock before they slide in and go alongside. Bending around the knuckle is possible but with a strong Easterly wind blowing it is not ideal as it might set the ship onto the knuckle, then you get a dent and you get paperwork and upset the local authorities. All these things you try to avoid as a captain as your life is already complicated enough. So what you do is you line up first and then slide in. If the wind pushes you over then at least the ship will make a soft landing with a larger part of the hull on the flat of the pier. To help with this the port has been dredged to give the very large ships the option to swing/and line up outside the confines of the harbor itself.
Today was a bit windy with occasional squalls coming over but as Barbados is lower than St. Lucia none of these squalls released much rain. They did cause the wind to pickup every time when one was coming by. This was also the most important lesson for my school class to day. When you play with an empty life boat – drifting like an egg shell on the water – the wind is the biggest factor in your assessment of the coming maneuver. Either you use the wind as your friend = let it do the work for you, or treat it as your enemy and you have to battle against it. After 90 minutes playing around, everybody understood that watching first how the wind affects the lifeboat and then using it your advantage, works better than deciding upon your boat handling without taking the wind into account and having a big battle on your hands.
Barbados is also the most southerly point of our cruise. Tonight we sail north again and tomorrow we are in Fort de France, Martinique. This is a regular part of France which means apart from speaking French and having French law they also have the Euro as the local currency. Although I do not believe that they are that french that they will not accept American Dollars.
Weather for tomorrow; more of the same. Warm, windy and a local shower.
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