After a windy night it turned into a very nice day. The wind was from the starboard side and so it pushed the ship against the dock and thus we did not have to worry about the ship blowing away. The north westerly wind did make it a chilly day something that you do not equate directly with Spain but then it is November which some people tend to forget. The Mediterranean also has seasons although they are less extreme than in Northern Europe. At least it was a dry and sunny day so those on tour could make the best of it. For us onboard it was a normal working day and not as hectic as the past week. Since Athens we have had two Lloyds Inspectors onboard who sailed with us to Barcelona to renew our Passenger Safety Certificate. This is a sort of paper that indicates that the ship is equipped with all necessary and required safety equipment, that it all works and also that the crew knows how to use it all. Although most of it is taking place behind the scenes, some times the guests will notice it, as there is equipment that is out in the open. The fire screen doors are in all the public lounges and corridors and they will have to be closed. Once locally, one by one, and once all together by central release from the bridge. We call the latter a general closure. To avoid it affecting the guests too much we do this in the middle of the night when everybody is sleeping. Nobody will get confused if suddenly the long open corridors are gone and closed of by a door that was never seen before.

Another item that made the guests notice that something was going on was the PA test, which had to be done as the speakers onboard are primarily there for safety announcements. The surveyors had to check all of them and we do that by playing music from the bridge. We hook up an IPod to the microphone and have the system on the “ALL CALL” and then walk the whole ship. The chief officer saw his chance to play his favorite music and have a captive if compulsory audience. Luckily was taste is not that extreme and we even got a few compliments for the choice of music. After 7 days the inspection was concluded without any issues found and all our certificates were validated for the coming year.

charity chair web Crew members from Hotel load the old chairs in the van for delivery to a Barcelona charity.

Thus the ship could return to regular routine as all these inspections have to be done on top of already very full program. Not everybody could directly return to normal routine as the chief officer was organizing a “musical chair” activity on the pier side. The Prinsendam is constantly being refurbished and upgraded to keep its charm and remain on par with the newer ships in the fleet. Today we were renewing the chairs in the guest cabins. The old one’s over 200 of them were landed today. We found a charity in Barcelona, which delighted to take them and so they were directly picked up from the pier. The new chairs arrived at the same time and as soon as the old chairs were out, the new chairs went in. It almost worked perfectly except for the last truck which remained stuck in Customs for some unknown reason. That truck was released 30 minutes before the ship sailed and we just managed to get it all onboard before the ship sailed. The new chairs arrived all in carton boxes and were unpacked on the pier so that the carton could go directly for recycling and did not need to be stored onboard or landed as garbage.

new on and off The new chairs are loaded via the conveyor belt normally used for luggage. Carton goes directly in a recycle container.

We sailed on time, the moment the last chair was loaded and headed southwards towards our next port to call, Cartagena on the South coast of Spain. Due to the distance we will not be able to arrive there until noon time tomorrow. This town has one of the least amounts of rain fall in Spain, and guess what it is going to rain tomorrow.