27 October 2008, At Sea.

We are on the way from Barbados to the Grand Turk and Caicos islands and this is one of the distances that fall right out of the regular schedule. This means if we go full speed, we arrive in the middle of the night and if we go slow speed it is costing us two days to get there. As the night life of Cockburn Town on Grand Turk is not that exciting for 1100 guests, we are going slow and we will enjoy two beautiful days at sea. The Trade winds are very light at the moment and that means that there is hardly any breeze over the decks as the ship is traveling at the same speed as the wind is blowing.

We are following a route that will take us to the North part the Caribbean and then we will exit the Caribbean Sea via the Mona Passage located between Puerto Rico and Hispaniola (the island on which the Dominican Republic and Haiti are situated). From there we work our way into the Bahamian chain of islands to which Grand Turk and the Caicos islands are attached. By tomorrow morning we should have exited the Caribbean and be back in the North Atlantic Ocean.

As the weather is uncommonly quiet; we are sailing between two frontal systems that are moving only very slowly, there is hardly any wind and thus also hardly any current. Most the current in the Caribbean Sea is wind driven, generated by the Trade Winds but as they are virtually absent at the moment, the current has petered out to nearly zero. That is not good for my fuel consumption. I had hoped to do the whole stretch on two engines, saving some fuel from what extra I had used battling the Amazon current going up the river but mother nature is not helping this time. I needed just one knot of current with me to stay on two engines but now I will have to run a 3rd one for just a few hours every day to maintain the schedule.

Life on board today was busy with lectures and numerous parties going on. We had our second Mariners party, with the whole ship being a Mariner due to the long cruise; we have to do three of them and together with meetings that took up my morning. In the afternoon there was a Grand Voyage Forum meeting to give the guests some information about the coming long cruises with the HAL ships and I put my 2 cents in by explaining a bit of the background history of long cruises. (See also on my website, the article about the first cruise ever) Then there was a Cruise Critic get together followed by two hours of shuffling paperwork.

My evening was filled with hosting my captains table followed by one of the highlights of the cruise, the Black and White Officers Ball. It is not always easy to get all the officers out of the woodwork; the workload is so much heavier than 10 to 15 years ago, but once a cruise I can rely on them to be there to dance with the Ladies. Of course the gents are not forgotten and all the female officers and concessionaires attend as well. The Ball was in the show lounge, which lasted until midnight and then the crows nest was still open for those who wanted to continue until the early morning hours. I called it a day at midnight as I had been going full speed from 7 am. in the morning. But it is very enjoyable to do this sort of thing. It gives a bit of style and ambiance to the cruise and it is my chance to get the juniors acquainted with the social life onboard. It is a part of the job that will become more and more important when they go through the ranks and especially when they are working on ships that are sailing on the long cruises.

Decending onto the dancefloor with the ships first Lady, Melissa the party planner, as my wife is at home.

The Officers decending onto the dancefloor.
Both photos courtesy of the ships Photo and Video Manager Mr. Noel Chirayath.

Tomorrow is another quiet sea day. The weather forecast shows hardly any rain or wind, so it should be a perfect day to enjoy the ship, the sea and the sky.

Hello Copper, inregards to your query of yesterday, those ugly towers on the Barbados dock are sugar-cane- elevators. They were used in the past to transport raw sugar in bulk via a conveyor belt to these towers, which elevated -read sucked up- the sugar into a chute and loaded it directly into the cargo hold. They are currently not in use and the dock is used for cruise ships when the other berths are filled.