29 November 2010; Fort Lauderdale, USA.

By 3 am we were crossing the Straits of Florida and battling a 3.5 knot strong Gulf Stream current. Because we were heading South West and the current was pushing us north, we had to steer drift. That means if the actual, direct, course is 245o then you have to steer more to the South to compensate for it. Maybe 240o, or even lower. Also the slower you go, the more the current will set you to the North and thus the more of a drift angle you will have to steer. We were doing 17 knots and we had a drift angle of 12o most of the time. That is quite considerable. On the radar it looked like we were aiming for Miami with the bow but being set towards Fort Lauderdale with the rest of the ship. We had an agreed pilot time of 0600 as per Harbour masters orders but then the planners realized that we would have to pass the Navigator of the Seas, to get to our dock. By switching the pilot times of the two ships around that would not be necessary and would create a much safer situation. Thus our pilot time became 05.45 and that of the Navigator of the Seas 06.00. Going in ahead of us was the Allure of the Seas which carries more guests than the Navigator and the Prinsendam together……….. and the Navigator is part of the class that in the past was the biggest in the world. All went well and by 0645 we were safely docked, awaiting what the day was going to bring us.

That day was our change over day. Apart from 6 guests, all guests were going home and once all luggage was off their disembarkation started. In the mean time we started off loading spare parts that were going ashore for repair or storage and recyclables for further processing at the shore side. Then the loading started and that would in the end take until 9 pm in the evening. We had already foreseen that this was going to be a major challenge and for that reason departure had been delayed from 1700 hrs. to 22.00 hrs some time ago. What slowed down the normally fast loading operation was the lack of man power, caused by the USCG inspection and the one of the CBP.

As we had not been in the States for the last 90 days, it is a requirement that all crew has to been seen by the Officers of the Custom and Border Protection. That normally takes 1.5 hours. The major hurdle that came with it was that all our 195 Indonesians then had to go ashore for a secondary inspection and were therefore bussed in groups to the CBP centre. They could only go after the drills were done for the USCG. Thus we had to load the ship, prepare the cabins and then open the restaurants with a much reduced crew. Because of that we lost valuable time and that meant that we all had to step up the pace very much to get it all done. In the end even yours truly was lugging boxes to get the escape corridors cleared before departure.

In the end it all worked out. The USCG was happy with drills and the safe state of the ship, everybody got his CBP stamp, we got all our supplies onboard and all the guests had their luggage by 5 pm. An extra challenge was the loading of 140 boxes of new bedding and other soft goods. The company is always investing in upgrades for the ship and at the moment we are tackling the soft furnishings in the guest’s cabins. For the next three days we have shore side labor onboard to install new curtain rails and new curtains and house keeping will start with exchanging the soft goods.

So by 10 pm. we sailed tired, relieved but also satisfied that Club Prinsendam had once again risen to the challenge and achieved something that looked like an impossible puzzle on paper. We had loaded over 330 pallets of provisions, soft goods and engine supplies; bunkered 500 tons of fuel; and on the side loaded a complete new golf course on the top deck.

Tomorrow will be the first day of our Amazon cruise and we are starting with 3 sea days. Not a bad way to start a 21 day cruise.