27 November 2008, Santo Tomas de Castilla.

Well, we did not have fog on arrival but there was a haze hanging over the rain forest that borders the terminal. For Santo Tomas standards it was a chilly day, with noon temperatures about 10oF lower than what is normal for the time of the year. Most guests were quite happy with it as with no wind in the port it would have been a very warm day had it been a normal day. It seems that for the time being it won’t be normal at all here in the West Carib. as the next cold front is already forming in Prairie land and will start to come down the Gulf of Mexico by tomorrow evening. If I am lucky it will just have passed Tampa by Sunday but we will see.

Yesterday I mentioned about the new job of crew purser on the ships. Also other company’s have a crew purser onboard for administrative purposes, but that function is called Human Resources Officer onboard Holland America Line ships. Crew purser is a new function and is currently rolled out across the fleet. The new function is partly involved with finance, partly with crew training and for a large part with organizing crew activities and being a contact point for the crew if they have any issues. The function could also have been called a crew welfare officer but crew purser is more of a nautical title I suppose.

The function was created by the company to bring some structure to the organization of crew events. In the old days, each department used to have committees that organized things but with the increasing workload and the changing demographics of the crew, these structures did not work anymore. Thus it could happen that on one ship there was a buzzing social life and on the other ships it was rather quiet. All depending on the personal initiatives of those who just happened to be onboard. Now with this function, we have a person who can energize all the idea’s and also help in the company’s time, to carry them out.

I am very happy with the idea, as it gives me a fixed contact point among the ships complement who I can reach if help has to be given, or when issues have to be solved. All the work results in a monthly crew activity calendar, which is finalized a week before the new month starts. For that purpose I invite the crew purser every other week to the staff meeting so that the department heads all know what is going on and arrangements can be made directly for whatever help is needed. There is a crew fund to pay for the various programs and that money partially comes from the company and partly from our waste recycling programs onboard. Also the auction money from the ships navigation chart that hangs in the ship and gives the route of the cruise goes into the crew fund as well. Finally the profit from the books that I sell onboard goes in the fund as well. If we have big expenditures then we can contact Human Resources in Seattle and thus far they have never said no to anything we have asked for.

The crew activities are as diverse as crew parties, soccer matches (between ships or against shore side teams), music nights, bingo, raffles, crew tours, karaoke etc etc. One of those parties, was the one during which we said officially goodbye to Sutrisno our Store keeper. The crew pursers come partly out of the pool of Hotel Officers of the company but we also hire directly from outside. The main criteria is to be very sociable and willing to be a shoulder to cry on (occasionally) and willing to be around during late hours and sometimes during port days when everybody else runs ashore. The latter happens mostly when new crew come onboard as the crew purser is the first person who meets and greets the new crew. This meet and greet is a very simple but potent item that makes the boarding crew directly feel at home. I think it is a great function to have and the crew purser has my full support as it definitely adds to having a happy crew onboard the ship.

Tomorrow we will be in Costa Maya. We are supposed to be the only ship and the weather looks very good. We are in between cold fronts, so very little wind and swell, and a pleasant temperature all day long.