With the sedate speed of 15 knots are we sailing through the Caribbean Sea. The weather is following the weather forecast and that is appreciated by everybody. We expect that the Trade Wind will start to re-establish itself this evening and through out the night and with it the swell. But by tomorrow morning 05.30 we will be slipping inside the entrance of Boca Chica, the large inland water area where at the far North East the port of Cartagena is located. As explained in previous blogs, it takes about 90 minutes from pilot to gangway out and thus the captain is aiming to have the pilot on board at 05.30 hrs. The ships average speed has been set up for this as arriving earlier has not much use. If we put the pedal to the metal we could be there my midnight but what then.
Nowadays the port is a long long way from the town and also most of our guests are no longer interested in visiting the “fleshpots of Babylon” as the Good Book tells us. Before the container era, there were regular docks and the old town and all the night life was just outside the Gate. I saw the last of this when I was there with the old Statendam in 1981 and 1982. Then we saw many a party goe-er, both guest and crew come back in various stages of undress and totally without any money or belongings. All the docks have been cleaned away, the area filled and the container port is now very safe; but with it also some of the fun has gone. (At least for some people)
The ss Maasdam (III) docked at the old sheds of Cartagena. This photo is from somewhere in the sixties. Cartagena’s claim to fame was that it had the largest rats on the dockside of all the Caribbean ports. With the containerisation they all disappeared as there was no wastage anymore.
As the weather is not very exciting to talk about at the moment, I will write something about the environment that we live in and how Holland America and the whole Carnival Family is very busy with reducing the carbon footprint of the ships. In the good old days, everything was thrown overboard and the ships burned the cheapest stuff possible. I always wondered if some sort of scientist would develop beer bottle sonar; then we could just navigate from New York to Europe on the reflecting signal; without fail. There must be millions of Heineken, Newcastle Ale and Miller bottles down there (not to forget chianti bottles on the Mediterranean track) from the 1850’s to about 1980.
Around 1980 recycling slowly started, pushed by the public but also by the shipping companies as they realized that it was not correct what was going on, but the ports were often very reluctant to invest in receiving facilities. But fast forward to the current day, and nowadays only food stuffs go overboard, much to the delight of the fishes and up to 90% can now be fully recycled shore side for further use. And I think we will hit the 100% in the near future. That is much more than the average shore side town does.
Carnival Corporation 2020 Sustainability Goals (PRNewsFoto/Carnival Corporation & plc) As as are all reporting to Carnival Corp. the focus points for Holland America are the same. This means a lot of work for all the company’s together but worthwhile to do ofcourse.
That left the air emissions from the ships. Again the same as shore side where people love SUV’s and even bigger trucks and those are gas guzzlers and do not have a very good carbon foot print. So for the ships the companies started to look to at cost effective ways of reducing emissions. We went to burning MGO instead of HFO and that had some positive results but might in the future it become difficult to get, when the whole world adopts the ECA laws in 2020. Now we are having the first ships with LNG gas. Wonderful solution and Carnival and Aida have a few already. Problem is that the infrastructure is not there yet there to make worldwide use possible and so these lNG ships sail on shorter circle cruises from a home port where there is an installation.
But the deep thinkers have come up with a new solution that will work for the worldwide ships and thus for Holland America. At the moment we are already using scrubbers (A sort of washing machine for the exhaust gasses) but these are very large systems and take a lot of TLC. Thus now we are getting AAQS (Advanced Air Quality System) installations. This works by washing the exhaust gases by pumping water into the fuel (Water Fuel Emulsion). We were already doing that to a limited extent but this new system will be able to run on HFO (Heavy Fuel) instead of on MGO (Marine Gas Oil) and will still give a better result in reducing emissions. MGO is a more processed fuel and as a result it has a lot more Polycyclic Aromatic Carbons than HFO. And with the AAQS we can get it out. Also instead of reducing particulate matter (PM) by 10% this new system does it up to 90%. I do not have photos or diagrams yet, as several companies are now producing systems which will comply with our fleet standards, so everything is still very much hush-hush. But it won’t be like that for long.
Carnival has had it under study for over 5 years as we do not always believe what the manufacturers tell us. And this is the advantage of a large company; it can put resources towards these sorts of projects (This is about a 1 billion Dollar investment) to see if this really works and then start installing it over the whole Carnival Fleet. The aim is of course to one day come to zero emissions and I would not be amazed if the shipping industry, certain the cruise industry, would manage to do this ahead of shore side.
Personally I am also doing my little thing. In 2010 we moved to a Hybrid car (with my wife’s blessing as it can take 5 suitcases) and the next step will be a fully electric car but England is not that fast with increasing charging points as the rest of Europe. So the range is not yet there. Consequence is that we will have to install power plugs/ charging points for all the cars in our large garage under our apartment building. We will do that one day, but I have to move our Old England neighbors slowly into the new world.
The Northern Caribbean is still fairly quiet but near Cartagena is already is coming back to the normal 20 knots of wind. Please note, due to the wind almost being straight East, we have a small Tehuantepecer blowing of about 35 knots. Hopefully it will not increase when we get there. (See right above the 87oW) (Diagram courtesy www. PassageWeather.com)
Weather for tomorrow in Cartagena: Partly Cloudy. Temp. 31oC /88oF and a gentle breeze.
March 23, 2019 at 2:09 pm
It would be wiser if the new world would work on those countries that really pollute this earth!! I think America and Europe are doing their parts, but if you don’t have the whole world doing the same, then conservation of the planet will be a joke!!!