And a miserable day it was. It rained all day and it just looked like England. At least the English people perceived it to be. With one difference the rain was not very cold but still wet. We are having a frontal system coming over with rain and wind in the morning, then rain only, and then rain and wind in the late afternoon. But better today than tomorrow. Today the guests are traveling homewards or coming to the ship and that is a lost day anyway. And what comes over now is what we will not see in Half Moon Cay as that is the direction where all the wet stuff was coming from.
We were the only ship in today, courtesy of coming in on a Tuesday, which is about the oddest day you can have for a cruise ship to come to Fort Lauderdale and Miami as it falls completely outside the 7 day cycle. Only the odd 10 & 11 day cruise ship cycle might hit the home port on a day like this but there are not that many ships that do so. Thus that leaves the Volendam as this was a 15 day cruise and it leaves it to ships which come back from long cruises. They do not always return on a weekend either. With the only ship in we had our regular Holland America Line berth, Pier 26, and a large number of customs officers to clear the ship. I counted six CBP officers, one deputy sheriff and one K9 with handler in the luggage Hall. And the latter was really happy to sit inside and not have to trot around in the rain sniffing pallets.
This is the USCG who have dogs as well. They normally do not look for “happy stuff” but more for things that can go boom. Also CBP has dogs and so has the TSA.
I do not think we have the same sniffer every week but we always have one in attendance for checking / sniffing all the provision pallets which are loaded on board. As I understand from last year they do a 20 minute sniffing round along the pallets and then take a break. (I suppose that time is needed to re-calibrate the dogs nose before it can make another round). I saw the dog and his/her handler out in the early afternoon and both looked very miserable as everything was soaking wet, including themselves. But on nice days, cruise ship duty must be a nice gig for a K-9 as no doubt they are also in use for much graver investigations. The sniffer dogs seldom find something in our provisions as most of it comes from dedicated growers and producers which all have year long contracts. And they know that just a little bit of negative publicity can cost them a very cozy cruise ship contract.
And this is “Jake” the K-9 from the Broward Sherrif’s department. One day while sniffing a cruise guests bag he got such a nose full that he was himself “happy” for quite awhile. Newspapers kept in close contact to see if Jake would make a full recovery and he did, and returned back to work.
Where the dogs are sometimes very successful is when we do charter cruises. We sometimes have music charters, blue grass, country, jazz or surfer music, and we get lots of guests who woke up happy in 1968 and decided to stay there. They are good for us as they normally drink up a storm but also they tend to make arrangements to stay happy on board. Holland America follows details in the laws of any country and state and that means that this happiness can cause issues with law enforcement. A happy K-9 does not always translate into a happy guest. But I think today it was all quiet as our K-9 and the handler left the moment the last pallet with strawberries (?) arrived on the pier.
Luckily it dried up a little bit during the Guest Boat drill and thus we did not have to move everybody inside to conclude the drill. It is a nice exercise to do this and most guests find it a fascinating experience but as they had already traveled through rain and wind, a dry or semi-dry spell was much better. On our newest ships we have indoor mustering all the time as the company had to decide between large public rooms or large outside decks and went for the first. On the older ships (read before 2010) we still muster outside as the outside decks are wide enough to have everybody standing under their own lifeboat. A lot of our company’s also have indoor mustering as it does not expose the guests to the elements.
So tomorrow we are again in Half Moon Cay. We are by ourselves and that means we will use only shore side tenders to shuttle everybody from ship to shore and back. A lot easier for all involved. The weather has a certain question mark. If all goes according to the predictions of the weather gurus, then the last rain should pass over Half Moon Cay around 04.00 hrs. in the morning and after that we should see more and more sun and very little wind. Hopefully they are right as it would be a perfect start of the cruise, with warm temperatures of around 79oC / 26oC but not that blistering hot as it can be after a few days of constant sunshine.
Note: No own photos this time. I have some but the K-9 handler said they could only be published after departmental approval and that process would take a lot longer that the time frame of my daily blog allows. Hence two googles from the internet. As the same photos appeared on several sites, no courtesy to source as I have no idea where they originally came from.
April 10, 2019 at 5:15 am
Nice job on the K-9’s Kaptein. It is interesting how they work as they have no clue they are sniffing out illegal narcotics, explosives, etc. To them, in their mind, they are looking for their favorite “toy”, usually a rubber toy or simply a small white towel to play tug-o-war with his/her handler with after the find. During basic training for the dog, the scents of various narcotics are “associated” with the dog’s fav toy so now the dog is still looking for that toy but he’s also now sniffing for the odor of the narcotic. When the K-9 locates this scent, and thus the narcotics, the handler quickly produces the toy and throws it towards the K-9. The dog goes “there you go, I found my toy” – Best job on the police dept! I did it for five years (1986-1990) with a German Shepherd from Limburg by the name of “Wodan”