25 Feb. 2017; Fort Lauderdale; Florida, USA,

As planned I crossed the street today walking from Pier 26 to Pier 21 and transferred from the ms Eurodam to the ms Zuiderdam.  If nothing changes, then I will be here for 3 weeks until March 19^th. The ms Zuiderdam is making 10 and 11 day cruises from Fort Lauderdale. Calling at Half Moon Cay, Oranjestad, Willemstad, Cartagena (11 day), Panama Canal (Gatun Lake) & Colon and then back to Fort Lauderdale. If you have the time on your hands these are the cruises to make; not too short and not too long and they give a nice balance between sea days and port days. A lot of our guests really like sea days and that makes this a perfect cruise. Perfect enough to be sold out for this departure and the next ones are already booked close to capacity as well. Captain in command of the good ship Zuiderdam is Captain Bart Vaartjes who was my staff captain for a number of years on the S class ships, so he has been around with us for a long long time.

Our route for this cruise. For the 10 day cruise the ship does not call at Cartagena. Thus we have on board quite a few guests who are doing a back to back: both the sunfarer and the wayfarer cruise to catch all the ports.

When we came in this morning, it was a really small world, with some very low hanging clouds over the port. My wife tried to follow me on the webcam of Fort Lauderdale when the ship was coming in but she could only see the Zuiderdam which was coming later and at that time, the fog was starting to lift and things got a little better. But it took until 10 am. before the last of the haze was gone and it was really something that we could have expected. No wind to bring warm or cold air over the area as there was hardly any wind at all and thus the sea and air temperature were close enough together for the moisture in the air to condensate and turn into clouds.  We call it fog because we are sitting right into it but it is nothing else than a low hanging cloud; a cloud that touches the surface of the planet; but if you fly over it then it looks like the top of any other cloud. It is necessarily even flat. There where the temperature varies a bit there might even be a billowing cloud rising above the general surface cover. A sort of cloud we call Cumuli Nimbus when we can see them in the normal blue sky, high up, during a normal summers day.

Tonight the Eurodam and Zuiderdam will be sailing in tandem from Fort Lauderdale to Half Moon Cay. Both will arrive at the same time and both will depart at the same time. Then they will follow each other until they are under Cuba. From there the Zuiderdam continues south, aim for Oranjestad and the Eurodam will curve to the south west and will aim for Grand Cayman. Because 10 + 11 is 21 days the ships will see each other again on the 19^th. Later on the Eurodam goes to Alaska and the Zuiderdam will go to Europe. In Europe she will make a mixture of Baltic and other European cruises before returning to the East coast of the USA & Canada for the Fall Foliage season. By October she will be in dry dock in Freeport where she will get the same upgrade the Oosterdam and Eurodam already have received. Removing the Disco and replacing it with a Gallery Bar and introducing the Billboard on Board with the Duelling Pianos and the Lincoln Classic Music setup. At the same time there will be an upgrade for the cabins and the installation of the interactive TV in the cabins.

I will spend my coming three weeks focusing on crew training, drills, reviewing procedures and making a complete walk through of the ship. That will keep me happily occupied for the coming period and then the ship should be more than ready to deal with anything the auditors might throw at them.

Dealing with auditors is always a sort of chess game. You know what they try to find, so you make sure there is nothing to find and then the auditors have to start digging in the rules and procedures to see if they can find something else.  These audit process are already going on in our company for a number of years and thus is there less and less to find.  Audits are good as it sharpens the knowledge and procedures of everybody on board; on the other hand you cannot always be aware of every little minor and miniscule rule or procedure somebody has dreamt up and hidden way somewhere in an obscure directive so auditors will always find something. The game is just that they should not find anything they could be really proud about.

The weather tomorrow should be back to normal. North Easterly wind although not much of it but it will enable both ships to lay with the bow to the island side by side and conduct a regular tender service. But the little wind will make it very warm on the island, so I think it will feel much warmer than the 79oF / 26oC which is forecast. I hope the shops have enough sun block 35 in stock.