26 March 2018; Half Moon Cay, Bahamas.

Our cruise is different to last week. Holland America often does so, giving guests (Collector Voyager Guests or CVG’s) the option to do a back to back cruise. We are now making a circumnavigation cruise around Cuba, by calling at Half Moon Cay, Georgetown Grand Cayman, Cozumel Mexico and Key West Florida. If Half Moon Cay was located directly opposite Cuba, then we could have issued everybody with an official Circumnavigation Certificate.

Our Seven Day Cruise around Cuba, calling at Half Moon Cay, Georgetown, Cozumel and Key West.

The weather was glorious today, with just a gentle breeze blowing over the island and the sun shining all day. On top of that we were the only ship and thus our guests had all the facilities to themselves and 2000 guests ashore does not really make much of an impact on it all. The beach is more than large enough to handle triple the number but less, the better for the guests and certainly for the children. I saw today one shore tender coming back with several occupants showing signs of too much sun and not enough sun block and this is only the first port. They were accompanied by a large group of children whose immediate focus when stepping on board was the ice cream parlor, leaving mummy and daddy standing in the entrance with all the towels and all the various beach implements needed to  make it a successful day.  They made a lot of noise so it must have been a successful day.

From the 2000 guests on board about 1700 went ashore, the rest remained on board. Preferring shade or the tranquility of the pools. With all those ashore, the ship was very quiet and the first main event in the afternoon was “High Tea” on the ms Eurodam served in the Ocean Bar. I am still confused about what it is. Depending on some deep inspiration by the program makers, I have now been exposed to English-High Tea, Dutch High Tea, Afternoon Tea and just Tea. There is a distinct difference between High Tea and Afternoon Tea.  High Tea was an English invention to bridge the gap between Lunch and Supper (which was often served as late as 8 pm.) The word High was related to the fact that one sat on a higher chair as the food served was often more a meal than snacks and sandwiches.  Some of the The English (I do not know about the Scotts and the Welsh) mainly with children still call dinner Tea time. That confuses me as being Dutch, I relate Tea to a cup of tea with a cookie or a chocolate which I would get when coming from school at 16.00 hrs. It still does not make sense to me that the British can have Tea / dinner at 5 to 6pm but more and more now the English have dinner especially if a little later.

Afternoon tea was more for the posh people who had servants and kitchen staff who could prepare a range of nibbles and snacks to go with the tea. . Thus what we serve on board is Afternoon Tea as it comes with nibbles and (being a Dutch ship) also with cookies. I once opened a can of worms by raising the subject among hotel staff if it was a different “Tea” if you got those 3 story serving dishes with all the nibbles or if you had just waiters who were rotating by each time with an assortment of nibbles on a silver tray. As this group of Hotel staff came from different nationalities, quite a heated argument ensued which made me understand that it is not easy to have “TEA”.   Thus I stick with green tea, totally improperly made by means of a tea bag which I dip up and down in a mug of hot water.

The Sb side of the Crowsnest on board the Zaandam, when original. It varies considerably to the other two thirds of the room.

A little bit of Tea Trivia, when the S and R class was designed, the port side crow nest was configured for afternoon Tea by giving the place a little bit of a Colonial or Tropical feeling. It was never used as such because it was way too small for the number of guests who wanted to participate in Tea Time. Hence it is most of the time done in the Dining room or the Ocean Bar.

The ship sailed at 16.00 hrs. which is an hour later than when we go the other way, towards Fort Lauderdale. We have a bit more room in the schedule when going to our next port Grand Cayman and thus we can stay an hour longer. Our route calls for sailing down between the islands of the Bahama Bank, then crossing the Old Bahama Channel to sail into the Windward Passage and then sail southwest wards towards Grand Cayman.  The weather: not so great, there is a lot of wind coming in the next 24 hrs. but luckily it will be a following wind and that will make it not as uncomfortable on deck as it could have been. At least we were very lucky today.