18 October 2008, Santarem.

Well, the pilot was right. There was a lot of current in the river. 3 knots on average with sometimes even more in the narrower passages. Thus little chance of catching up some lost time. In the end we docked four hours late in Santarem because of the late clearance of yesterday. Luckily we could move all the tours around so nobody had to miss anything. The weather was sunny with hardly a cloud in the skies and as we arrived later the midday heat was already getting less. Thus maybe a later arrival was not such a bad thing after all; as the noon time temperatures can easily reach 90oF or more, with a very high humidity.

Santarem is a medium sized city on the Amazon that exports a lot of ore and industrial products. There is no cruise terminal so the Veendam docked at the best pier there is. For these ports we carry our own long gangways, which we store higher up on the outside of the ship and then lower them onto the dock for hooking into the ships break doors. Ports where a lot of cruise ships call have these gangway’s themselves but as the Amazon is (still) not really cruise ship country, we have to carry everything with us. In the ports of Manaus and Parintins, where we also call, it is much easier as the docks are floating pontoons that go up and down with the river height. There we can use the lower ships exits with a shorter and more convenient gangway.

The best dock in Santarem cleared for the arrival of the ms Veendam

Also every guest had more time to enjoy the scenery on the river, as some parts could be seen that we otherwise would have sailed by during the dark hours.

One of these parts is the widest part of the river. Here the Amazon is 5 miles wide during the dry season and up to 9 miles wide during the rainy season. So the water covers a lot of the low lands on either side of the embankments. There are farms on these embankments and the more permanent structures are either built on stilts or set on slightly higher ground so that during the rainy season they are not flushed away. Cruise ships do not call on the Amazon during the rainy season as it is not pleasant for the guests. The pilots say that when it rains, especially in the mid river part north of Santarem, the rain is just a solid wall of water that continuously falls. Visibility is restricted and everybody gets drenched the moment they step outside.

At Macapa we embarked two Amazon pilots who are staying with us until 12 hours south of Manaus, when another pilot comes on board, as that area is a different pilot jurisdiction. The two pilots will leave the ship, but rejoin us for the return trip. I have sailed with them before and they are the more seniors in the pilotage company. As a matter of fact one of them is the chairman of the Belem pilot association, under which district this part of the Amazon falls. However he is more proud about the fact that he is also the chairman of the local football club in Belem. The other one has spent more than 20 years on the river and I have not been able the catch him out yet when asking difficult questions. He basically knows every stone and tree in the river.

We need these pilots as we cannot sail the river without them. The charts that we have, the latest ones, brought on board by the ships agent, are out of date the moment they are printed and thus the local knowledge of the pilots is critical. The way they maintain their knowledge is very special. Every time they pass each other with a ship, they review what they have seen while transversing a special area. If one of them thinks that a new sand bank is forming in the river, the next pilot will steer the ship he is on in the direction of that observation and watch the echo sounder. If he observes the same, then he knows that there is something going on. The next ship will try to go a little bit closer to see what happens. And so it continues until they know what the new situation is like. For a captain it is a bit unnerving to see your ship being used as a survey vessel but as the Amazon changes position a little bit everyday, and a lot during the rainy season, it is the only way to keep abreast of the changes. Even when the pilots go on vacation, they have to call into the office every morning to hear if anything has changed recently. Just to keep their knowledge up-to-date.

ms Veendam “overland tour” courtesy of the Amazon. The black crosses mark the ships position every six minutes and white is the deep water according to the chart that was drawn before the rainy season.
On the photo above, you can see what I mean with changes. This is a picture from the 2006 Amazon cruise of the Veendam. The chart was made just before the rainy season started. We sailed on the river six months later. According to the map we sailed over land for almost an hour. However we had at least 30 feet of water under the keel with most of the time a lot more. So during the rainy season the Amazon churned out a new channel by removing part of the islands that were 20 feet above river level and so created a new channel with depths of up to 60 feet.

In order to check if the pilots do their job properly we cannot use these charts. We just have to communicate with them all the time, to find out if what they do makes common sense, if the echo sounder indicates the depth that the pilots are predicting and for the rest to be on constant alert. Because of this, the chief officer and I are taking turns being on the bridge. The 6-12 watch period for the chief and the 12-6 watch period for me. So while on the Amazon, I am not much of a social person, it is mainly navigating and sleeping.

All our guests were timely back onboard in Santarem, so we left on schedule. Tomorrow we are in Boca de Valeria to visit an Indian Village and to see flying pigs.