15 & 16 Nov. 2014; Capetown, South Africa.

And thus I descended upon Capetown with the mission to enlighten new officers about the remarkable world of Holland America. For those of you who would ever contemplate a direct flight from Seattle to Capetown via Amsterdam (or via Memphis): DON’T.  According to my ticket the total travelling time, including lay over in Amsterdam was 23 hrs. and 58 minutes and it sure felt like that, even travelling in Business Class. Then on arrival Capetown there were two hurdles of immigration to take, one together with customs to get into the country and two to visit to immigration in the port, to get on the ship. That clocked up two more hours.  If I would do this as a holiday maker, I would build in a layover in Amsterdam for two days, to get slowly acclimatized to the West – East time difference and then face the 11 hour flight to Capetown. The latter part has the advantage that there is only 1 hour forward on that whole flight, as it is mainly a north – south flight, but still it is a long time sitting on a chair to get there.

But here we are in the port of Capetown at the cruise terminal right at the foot of Table Mountain. The ship came in on the 14^th. and will be leaving on the 17^th. Reason for such a long stay in port, it is a changeover port, and a certain number of guests will go home and new guests will fly in.

So what is the plan for my being here? While I was busy hopping over the ships for the introduction of the 3 alarm system, another Captain, Marco Carsjens was developing a new program for indoctrinating new officers to the company.  Nowadays a new officer is exposed to so much learning, rules and regulations and other requirements before even starting the job; that some give up completely and some have a really very heavy first contract. That is not the way that Holland America wants to introduce new officers to our way of doing business. But as you cannot change the official requirements, we are stuck with it.  Ideally, you want to give them more time onboard to sail as extras while getting settled in and complete all the requirements that are out there. However cabin space is limited and that creates a catch 22.

There is only one option, and that option is now being tried out for the first time. On very long cruises the ships are not always completely sold out. Although Marketing would love to do that, they normally do not reach the full 100%. That gives us a chance to conduct a training program onboard.  On this final stretch of the cruise, there were sufficient cabins empty to put a good group onboard. The training program is called: the Nautical Excellence Course conducted by two Captains and we also have an Engine Excellence Course at the same time, conducted by retired Chief Engineer, Willem Dullaert.  The whole training /induction/ familiarization will take 3 weeks and then the participants will either go home or fly out to their respective ships.

In total we have 13 participants, made up of 8 for the nautical side and 5 for the technical side.  11 gentlemen and 2 ladies. The days that Holland America could source its officers solely from the Netherlands are long gone and thus we have quite an international group. The Netherlands, Belgium, England, Germany, Romania and New Zealand.  Some have already sailed with other company’s but some of them have just finished their cadetship and are now ready to start working on the ships.

In the coming three weeks they will be immersed in nearly every aspect of their future jobs and by the time that they go their respective ships, they should be able to start their work without having to find their way around.  The only thing that will be missing will be experience but that you can only gain while doing the job.

Yesterday we had the first day with introductions and getting settled and today we ran through the who is who on board, who does what and why do they do what they are doing.

The local weather is currently nicely behaving, which means it is not too windy and most guests are out and about exploring Cape Town. More about that tomorrow.

CapeTown port basically consists out of three ports. The old small  inner harbour now for small ships to the NW and two larger basins towards the SE for the rest.