30 November 2008, Tampa.

The frontal system was only slowly moving forward and there was the normal 25 knots of wind at the pilot station. Normal, as in the past weeks we had not seen better, only worse. However the wind was from the South South East and that meant it was blowing straight through Sparkman and Ybor channel towards the berth. With the American Victory in close proximity I decided to use a tugboat as an insurance against the wind catching the funnel while we swung around in the turning basin, thus preventing the chance of bashing into the Victory. That way we happily and safely docked at our regular time. The local weather forecast indicated that the frontal system was now supposed to come over Tampa in the early afternoon and thus I could have an undisturbed few hours sleep.

By 10.30am the first wind gusts came over the terminal but as I was expecting this I used the thrusters to keep the ship alongside to ease the strain on the lines. Most of our mooring lines have a bit of stretch in them and so the ship can come off the dock a little bit, although it is then still safely moored. Normally that does not matter very much, the ships gangway moves along with the ship, but here in Tampa the main deck gangway is a fixed one from the shore side. This is the jet way that leads the guests from the terminal into the ship and this gangway does not move and thus a gap could occur between ship and the jet way. When we arrive in the morning, we have to line the ship up exactly with this jet way, with a tolerance of about 2 inches.

When the winds died off after an hour, we saw dark clouds gathering at the horizon, rain clouds that followed the first pressure/wind wave. There can always be strong winds inside a cloud system and when I heard the USCG issuing a Tornado alert, I thought ”we are going to have fun”. By 2 pm. the clouds came over the ship and dropped a bit of rain but not as much as expected and also the associated winds did not materialize. At least not in the area where the Veendam was docked. However I prefer to be on standby on the bridge all afternoon, waiting for something that never happens, than not being prepared at all, when suddenly all H… breaks loose. Later on I heard that in Manatee, near the entrance to Tampa Bay, they did have a lot of wind and in Cape Canaveral it blew the gangway of a Disney ship into the water.

While I was thus happily occupied, waiting for the bad weather that never came; the ship was audited in regards to our ISO 14001 compliance in relation to Environmental matters. Holland America is a front runner in the industry where it comes to dealing with the environment and the company decided to use the ISO 14001 system as the frame work for this. Lloyd Register is the company who audits the process and the Veendam was selected as one of the ships where the implementation of the system would be verified. That means that the auditor compares the objectives and targets that the company has set itself are properly implemented onboard and on the other side that operational routines in use on the ship fit in the frame work of this ISO system. Tomorrow in Key West we will hear the result but I have no doubt that TEAM Veendam is ready for the challenge.

Representatives and staff of the Veendam proudly displaying banner showing the ships comittment to ISO 14001. The banner was signed by all the crew of the vessel.

Just on departure, I had a challenge on my hands, namely a medivac. The Veendam was just letting go lines, when the hospital phoned with the message that a crewmember urgently needed to go ashore for emergency treatment. Well the Tampa emergency services rose quickly to the occasion and within 10 minutes, I had the fire brigade, an ambulance and at least 8 police cars in front of the gangway. Our crewmember was off the ship very quickly and on the way to hospital for further evaluation. Latest news is that he doing well.

We followed the Carnival Legend out to open sea. Normally they sail an hour earlier than we do but they had to wait for a flight, so we left almost at the same time. Had I not been delayed by the medivac, we would have sailed all the way to open sea about one mile apart.

Tomorrow we are in Key West and they are expecting rocky weather there, so they moved our docking place from Mallory to the Navy pier. This increases the chance for me to get docked and also not having to sail around the Carnival Freedom who is scheduled for the B pier. It is going to be a rocky night while sail down the coast. 25 knots of winds and a swell that has been building up for the last two days will certainly make the ship to move a bit.