19 March 2013; At Sea.

 Right outside Aruba the wind up picked up again, although this time it was of less concern as it was a following wind and the weather forecast indicated that outside the Panama Canal it would be wind still. Thus 30 knots of wind in the back was not a problem. It gave the ship a bit of extra speed, free of charge, and it made it nearly wind still on the outside decks and that made the open decks a pleasant place to be. The strong winds have one disadvantage and that is that there are no birds to be seen. A soon as it goes over wind force 4, about 14 knots, all the sea gulls, brown booby’s and starlets disappear. For any life in the ocean it is the same, they either dive under, or the waves with the whitecaps and foam make it impossible to see them. As a result we did not see much at all during the last few days. I expect that it will improve once we get to the other side as it is nearly wind still in the whole area between the Panama Canal and Puerto Vallarta.

The SS Rotterdam of 1958. Now Hotel “de Rotterdam” on the Southbank of the river.  

 A few days ago I mentioned that I had changed my contract due to the SMC. This stands for Senior Management Conference and it takes place every 18 months. There are two conferences as the ships have to keep sailing in the mean time. In between each conference the first group flies out to the ships and group two goes off the ship and flies in. This year the conference is in Rotterdam and, most appropriate, will take place on board the old ss Rotterdam which was our flagship until 1997.

She has been a hotel now for some years and it is running better every year. I have stayed there now three times and I enjoyed it better each time I was there. Apart from the hotel management getting a better handle on things, there is a society of volunteers, mainly past HAL employees, who work very hard to bring the ship alive and are restoring small parts of the ship step by step to its original beginnings. Recently the Frontage of the Shops on board, including the name De Lynbaan (named after the main shopping street in Rotterdam) was reinstalled. It will be nice for all of us to stay on board the ship, although there will be a lot of senior officers who have never sailed on the ship. But they will also find it interesting to go back 50 years in time to see how a modern ocean liner and cruise ship looked back then.

When I saw the dates for the SMC, I scratched my head over it, as it would mean that I would have to fly from Alaska to Rotterdam and then back again for only three weeks, as three weeks later my regular leave would start. My colleague would have had to do the same and neither of us saw much reason to have jetlag twice in one week and take the ship through Seymour Narrows while having it. The simple solution was that I would do a shorter contract now, my colleague will join the Statendam straight after the first SMC and I will attend the 2nd SMC and then go on leave. I will then come back to the Statendam earlier and stay longer. By the end of the year the schedules will be back in synch again. I have posted the new dates on the blog site.

The SMC is always an interesting gathering, partly socially as we catch up with colleagues we otherwise never see and partly professional as it gives the Head Office the chance to show case the latest plans and developments in the industry and the company. Some meetings are for everybody and that means that we have 15 x 4 plus the office people in a meeting but there are also a number of breakout meetings that are for specific groups. Captains, Staff Captain, Hotel Directors etc. etc. The whole happening lasts three days and the last four days of the week are for flying out and in so that the groups can change.

So today we sailed north of Colombia and transversed the Colombian basin, that curved sea area from where the tiny Isthmus of Panama curves North from. Tomorrow we will be at the entrance to the Canal at 0500 hrs. to start the transit. It will be interesting to see how far the new locks have progressed in the nearly 3 months that I have been away.