19 Feb. 2017; At Sea.

Most of the Caribbean Islands do not change their clocks at all and thus are an hour behind Florida during the winter months when North America goes to winter time. That means that on the first night out the ships clocks go one hour forward and that gives a very quiet morning in the Lido. This morning it only got busy after 08.30 while on port days (or days with an hour back) the place is already hopping at 06.30 – 07.00 hrs.  So this morning it was quiet as predicted and I could breakfast in silent splendor and luxury. There was not much reason for the guests to be early as there was absolutely nothing to see. It was not until about 09.00 that the Eurodam sailed clear from under a weather system with very dark and low hanging clouds. But as the clouds had not wind in them, there was very little swell and thus it did not affect anybody very much.

Because the North Atlantic was so nice and quiet, the captain had opted for the short route sailing above the Grand Bahama Bank. That is the shorter route but if it is wobbly then going north of Cuba gives you a much calmer ride until late in the afternoon of the first sea day. So most captains go that way then, placing guests comfort above saving a few pennies on fuel. But it was not needed this time so we took the short route as we need every bit of speed available to make the time up from yesterday’s late departure.

Although I had hoped that everybody could make it to the ship on time yesterday, and to the other ships as well, this was not to be. Somehow 24,000 guests coming and going caused a hiccup in the airport and airplane supply system and not everybody was going to make it to the various ships by 16.00 hrs. thus the VHF’s starting squawking around 15.15 hrs. relaying the bad news coming from the airport. Normally the captain then has to make a quantified decision about sailing or not sailing.  Are the wait and the cost incurred balancing out against people reduced satisfaction and economic sense?

Yesterday it was a sort of joint decision with all the captains opting for staying and waiting. It also meant that our captain had to “wriggle” a lot less as the Celebrity Summit was staying as well but would still sail just before us. Giving us a lot more room to back down the Intracoastal water way to the turning basin and from there to open sea.  So instead of 16.00 hrs. the whole parade started at 17.00 hrs. and shortly there after in 5 minute intervals a big cruise ship popped out of the Port Everglades break waters.

Nice for the guests to have made it to the ship but it is not good for the fuel as on the run from Fort Lauderdale to Grand Turk the regular weather is not helping. Current and wind are standard against the general direction of where the ship is going, so it has to push and push and will never get a helping hand, until we start the return voyage. So this morning the navigators were muttering amongst themselves that the ship was having a hard time making the speed and whether another engine should be called on line.

Calling for extra engines is always worth a discussion as there are a lot of factors to consider and if you get it right, you can save a considerable amount of fuel. So the question was, for how much speed do we have to compensate taking into consideration whether the adverse wind and current will increase during the day, remain the same, or decrease?  So do we call for an extra 12 cylinder engine or a 16 cylinder engine? Shall we do it now and stop the engine later on again when we are back on the schedule again or shall we wait until we reach the moment when the average speed to maintain = maximum speed / output of the engines? And then just keep it running until arrival in port.

Experience helps a lot if you have done this route a number of times as you then roughly know what will happen during the remainder of the day with wind, weather and current. Thus the navigators decided to wait until the captain would make an appearance and then let him make the decision.

With that decision we will be sure that we arrive on time at the pier of Grand Turk Island for an all day long call. The weather gurus are predicting a sunny day with a very small chance of a shower, quite windy but that will keep the Temperatures around 77oF / 26oC.